In the spring of 2003, when Evanescence emerged with their debut album, Fallen, it was unlike anything anyone had ever heard. Among the predominantly male nü-metal and post-grunge acts that were popular at the time, the female-fronted band offered rock fans an oasis of sorts. Pushing the alternative sound to the edge of a gothic rock opera, the album’s powerful-yet-ethereal sound blended cathartic metal riffs with haunting, piano-driven melodies. At the helm was Amy Lee and her gripping, emotive vocals. 

The album was the culmination of a partnership that began years earlier when Lee and guitarist Ben Moody met at camp. Before long, the teen duo was playing gigs around Little Rock and establishing their signature, cinematic sound with the help of local friends and musicians and a 16-track recorder to create multi-layered instrumentation. By the turn of the millennium, Evanescence had grown to a trio (with the addition of keyboardist David Hodges) and independently released several EPs and a full-length demo, Origin, which caught the attention of Wind-up Records.   

As a testament to the depth and maturity of Lee and Moody’s songwriting, several tracks from the band’s earliest days were incorporated into their debut. Among them were “Whisper,” “Imaginary,” and “My Immortal,” which would become one of the band’s most enduring hits. Producer Dave Fortman (Slipknot, Mudvayne, Simple Plan) was a perfect fit for the band’s unique vision. Lush, iconic string arrangements by David Campbell (Aerosmith, Alanis Morrisette, Green Day, Linkin Park), drums by veteran musician Josh Freese (the Vandals, A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails), and a layer of full choir arranged and directed by Lee herself completed the picture.  

Many of the songs on Fallen were deeply personal to Lee. “Hello,” for instance, was written about the loss of the artist’s younger sister, who passed away when she was a child, while two of the album’s biggest hits, “Going Under” and “Bring Me to Life,” found the songwriter coming to terms with an abusive relationship. Speaking to Chik Magazine in 2003, Lee shared, “The point of this whole record and band is to let people know that they’re not alone in dealing with bad feelings or pain… I’m going through it too.” 

That sense of kinship resonated with fans around the globe, as evidenced by the album’s record-breaking success. In its first week, Fallen sold 141,000 copies in the U.S. – a mind-blowing achievement for a relatively-unknown band. Within a month, Fallen received its first Platinum certification, while outside of the U.S., it broke the Top 10 in more than ten countries. Much of the band’s stratospheric success can be attributed to its singles, including “Bring Me to Life,” which led the album and was a Top Ten hit in more than 15 countries. The following year, the song received a GRAMMY® for Best Hard Rock Performance, while Evanescence earned the award for Best New Artist. 

Fallen would set Evanescence on a path to global superstardom and influence a string of bands to follow. 20 years later, it remains one of the bestselling albums of all time, while its enduring appeal remains strong. Most recently, “Bring Me to Life” surpassed one billion views on YouTube, while Fallen earned a rare Diamond certification from the RIAA, marking an astonishing 10 million units in sales in the U.S. alone. 

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 18 Years of Fallen - Kerrang

This retrospective offers a poignant and personal look at the impact that Fallen had on one young fan. 

📰 Evanescence, Fallen: Classic Track by Track - Billboard

Originally published on the album’s tenth anniversary, this Billboard feature offers insight into every Fallen track.  

📰 "Amy Lee on Evanescence Early Days and Everything Hard Rock" - Rolling Stone

This in-depth Rolling Stone video interview finds Amy Lee recalling the band’s rise to stardom. 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Haunted” - As the title suggests, this song is about being possessed by a spirit…or an unrelenting relationship.

“Everybody's Fool” - A biting commentary on early aughts celebrity culture – particularly the sexualization of teen pop stars. 

“Whisper” - The album’s closing track builds into a dramatic crescendo, culminating with an eerie refrain by the Millennium Choir, who repeat the Latin phrase "Servatis a periculum / Servatis a maleficum,” which (according to several sources) translates to “Save us from danger / Save us from evil.”  

DID YOU KNOW?

The early 1990s are often affectionately looked back on as the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. As icons like Biggie, Pac and Nas were making their ascents to cultural royalty, various offshoots of the form were developing concurrently. One particularly mellow strain of the genre was Alternative Hip-Hop, popularized on the East Coast by such legends as A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. These groups injected humor and contemplation into their lyrics and combined them with a laid-back, often jazzy beat selection. The music transcended backgrounds and boundaries, reaching fans all over the world, including the West Coast. The Pharcyde were the most popular and influential West Coast group of their time to try their hands at the style. They ended up delivering an absolutely classic debut right off the rip with their legendary debut, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde. 
 
Formed in the late 1980s, The Pharcyde (who originally had a dance background, rather than rap) cemented their lineup by 1991. The group consisted of MCs Slimkid3, Imani, Bootie Brown and Fatlip. With the help of skilled producer Juan Manuel Martinez (“J-Swift”), the quartet found their sound early, and some of their most famous songs were included on their initial demo tape. The group quickly signed to Delicious Vinyl, and released Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde on November 24, 1992.  
 
With hilarious tracks like “Ya Mama” and “Oh Shit,” the album dealt with relatable themes and connected immediately with critics and discerning fans. “Pack the Pipe” became a stoner anthem with its blunted vibes and pro-cannabis lyrics, while the album’s biggest track, “Passin’ Me By,” smartly sampled Quincy Jones’ “Summer in the City” and soon became a crossover hit. The song peaked at #52 on the Billboard charts and reached the top slot on the Hot Rap Singles chart.  
 
The album became more of a cult classic than a commercial smash, but eventually earned the group a gold certification from the RIAA. Over time, the album has continued to endear its way into the culture and is often lauded on “Best Of” lists in publications from The Source to Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and more. Other West Coast groups, such as Souls of Mischief, Jurassic 5, and Hieroglyphics, used the Pharcyde’s groundbreaking blueprint as a launch pad for their own careers. Decades later, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde remains as jubilant and beloved as when it was released, bringing with it a nostalgia for simpler times and music that was as fun as it was funky. The Pharcyde succeeded in their quest for a Hip-Hop sound they could call their own.  

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 The Bizarre 20-Year Ride Of Two Pharcydes - NPR

📰 The Pharcyde - Who Sampled 

📰 Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde - Pitchfork 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Ya Mama” - A fun-loving cypher in which the group dedicates its rhymes strictly to the then-popular theme of making fun of each other’s mothers. The track embodies the energy of good friends hanging out together. 

DID YOU KNOW? 

1. A few months prior to Bizarre Ride’s release, The Pharcyde was first featured on Delicious Vinyl labelmates The Brand New Heavies’ song “Soul Flower.” 
2. The album was partially inspired by comedian Richard Pryor, who rebelled against 1960s whitewashing and sterile stage standards and instead championed honest humor that more accurately reflected his life experiences.  
3. Before they began rapping, the group danced in various music videos (including a Tone Lōc project) and appeared as the “Fly Guys” on the popular TV show In Living Color.

Vince Guaraldi knew a hit record when he heard one. Years before the San Francisco pianist wrote “Linus and Lucy,” the irresistibly grooving Peanuts theme that’s been indelibly imprinted on the soundscape of American childhood for more than a half century, Guaraldi had conquered the pop charts with a seductive earworm set to a gently undulating pulse. Released as the B-side to a spritely arrangement of Luiz Bonfá’s bossa nova hit "Samba de Orpheus,” Guaraldi’s original tune “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” was such a sensation, reaching No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart, that it overshadowed the pioneering 1962 album it was featured on, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus. He was one of the first American jazz artists to stoke the rising bossa nova movement, but Guaraldi came to his career-defining gig as the primary composer for Peanuts specials by, well, casting his fate to the airwaves.

Looking to make a documentary about Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, filmmaker Lee Mendelson happened to hear the hit on the radio while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. He got in touch with Guaraldi, who promptly got to work on the assignment. The first piece he wrote was “Linus and Lucy,” and when he called Mendelson the filmmaker said he’d drive right over to hear it.

But according to Guaraldi biographer Derrick Bang, the pianist was so excited about the new creation that he insisted on playing the theme over the phone. Before the call concluded Mendelson had an epiphany. “I have no idea why, but I knew that song would affect my entire life,” he told Bang. “There was a sense, even before it was put to animation, that there was something very, very special about that music.” 

While the documentary on Schulz never happened, Mendelson went on to produce many of the Peanuts specials, starting with 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. Part of the magic behind “Linus and Lucy” and the whole Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack is that Guaraldi used his working trio with bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli.

Inspired by the Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban rhythms that had infused his own recordings and his work as a sideman with vibraphonist Cal Tjader, Guaraldi’s music echoed the emotional depth of Schulz’s creations. Amidst the unbridled joy of “Linus and Lucy,” the trio imbues Guaraldi’s poignant  “Christmas Time Is Here” with quiet longing. Practically a standard itself now, the song fits in seamlessly next to the jazz arrangements of a half-dozen traditional Christmas songs. 

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 'Fresh Air' marks the centennial of Charles Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown - NPR

In honor of Charles Schulz' recent centennial celebration, NPR FRESH AIR brought back Terry Gross' 1990 conversation with the legendary cartoonist himself, plus a new chat with jazz critic Kevin Whitehead about Guaraldi's lasting legacy as the creator of the iconic soundtrack.

📰 Cyrus Chestnut - NPR

One of jazz’s most ebulliently swinging pianists, Cyrus Chestnut has spoken often about A Charlie Brown Christmas as formative influence. He discusses Guaraldi’s timeless music with NPR host Lisa Simeone.

📰 How the Vince Guaraldi Trio's 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' Became the Soundtrack of the Holidays - VICE

A comprehensive deep dive that traces the evolution of the soundtrack from a simple TV score to one of the most popular albums of all time.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Linus and Lucy” - Originally released on 1964’s Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the soundtrack to an unproduced documentary about Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, “Linus and Lucy” became an iconic theme as part of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Guaraldi used variations of the infectuously grooving tune arranged for flute, chimes, or harpsichord on many subsequent Peanuts specials. Almost a jazz standard, it’s been interpreted by artists as different as Dave Brubeck and David Benoit, Wynton Marsalis and George Winton.

“Skating” - Even more than “Linus & Lucy,” Guaraldi’s relatively brief piece “Skating” represents the radical nature of enlisting a hard-swinging jazz pianist to score a children’s animated television special. With a descending melodic line that calls to mind the Fats Waller standard “Jitterbug Waltz,” the tune evokes an ice skater gliding across a frozen pond, spinning in pleasure. Propelled by drummer Jerry Granelli’s caressing brushes, it’s an unapologetic jazz performance wedded to childhood innocence.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. With certified sales of more than four million copies, A Charlie Brown Christmas is a quadruple platinum album.
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
3. Drummer Jerry Granelli created a stage show Tales of a Charlie Brown Christmas that recounted how Peanuts special was almost derailed several times. He performed the show widely at jazz festivals and theaters after its 2013 premiere.
4. Vince Guaraldi’s trio recorded the score for A Charlie Brown Christmas without ever seeing any of the animation.
5. In the 2020 Netflix documentary about Michelle Obama, Becoming, the First Lady confidently sits down at the piano and plays a chorus of “Linus and Lucy.”

Words: Andrew Gilbert

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PHOTO CREDIT: Neal Preston

Most supergroups implode amid a clash of warring egos, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that artists of the stature of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne would be able to spend, say, five minutes together in the studio before vying for dominance over each other. Not so. All concerned have looked back fondly on the recording sessions that produced Traveling Wilburys Vol.1 and its follow-up, Traveling Wilburys Vol.3, professing amazement at working with fellow musicians they considered idols, and finding relief away from having to carry the weight of expectation that usually greeted albums they put out under their own names. Indeed, when Vol.1 was released, on October 17, 1988, these five rock icons presented a united front – a brotherhood, even – each donning a new Wilbury moniker that allowed them to take refuge behind their Ray-Bans: Lucky (Dylan), Nelson (Harrison), Lefty (Orbison), Charlie T, Jr. (Petty), and Otis (Lynne). 

Pressure? This was almost too easy. Legend has it that the Wilburys fell into place largely by chance: Harrison needed to record a B-side, and, over dinner, asked Lynne to produce. Orbison was also at the table that evening, and Harrison invited him to attend; the session was to be held in the garage of Dylan’s Malibu home, where Dylan had a recording studio. En route to the recording, Harrison dropped by Petty’s house to retrieve a guitar. Before long, all five future Wilburys were writing and recording songs together, at a rate of one per day.

The first, Harrison’s intended B-side, “Handle With Care,” set the parameters: unfussy arrangements, deceptively simple melodies, and radio-ready production that made space for each bandmate to shine. With knowing lyrics from a rock star now in middle age (“Been beat up and battered around/Been sent up, and I’ve been shot down/… Handle me with care”) and a spine-tingling pre-chorus from Roy Orbison, the song was deemed too good to be squandered as a B-side; issued as a standalone single in its own right, “Handle Me With Care” went to No.2 on Billboard’s Album Rock Tracks chart.

The group repeated the success with Vol.1’s eventual closing track, “End Of The Line.” But, if anything, being part of The Traveling Wilburys proved there was plenty more road ahead, creatively speaking, for this pace-setting generation of stars. Roy Orbison’s untimely death, aged 52, just a little over a month after the album’s release, may have cut his time as a Wilbury short, but this ageless collection of songs remains a musical epitaph to that rarest of things: a truly egoless collaboration between titans of their craft.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 The True History of the Traveling Wilburys - YouTube

At 25 minutes, this official documentary captures the group together in the studio, conjuring magic seemingly from the air. “All we planned was which weeks we were all available to get together,” Harrison admits. “Apart from that, there was no other plan.”

📰 Jeff Lynne Looks Back on The Traveling Wilburys - Billboard

Speaking on the 30th anniversary of Traveling Wilburys Vol.1, the ELO mastermind reveals how the Wilburys wrote songs together while they ate: “We’d be sitting there at the table, throwing out lines… the whole thing was done at dinner time.”

📰 Tom Petty on the Cosmic Genesis of an Extraordinary Supergroup - Louder

And Tom Petty reveals what truly made it work: “A lot of people think that The Traveling Wilburys were united because it was a good idea, but really we were pals and hanging out long before.”

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

You’ll be familiar with the catchy classics “Handle With Care” and “End of the Line,” but here’s more to dig into…

“Dirty World” - Prince reigned supreme in the 80s, and the Wilburys couldn’t resist a playful attempt at channeling “The Purple One” at his most lascivious. “Dirty World” may be more Americana boogie than “Minneapolis sound,” but a litany of innuendos (“He loves your fuel injection,” “He loves your five-speed gearbox”) would have made the “Little Red Corvette” hitmaker slam the brakes. 

“Rattled” - All five Wilburys were fans of 50s rock’n’roll, but only Roy Orbison provided a tangible link to that era, having been signed to Sun Records, the original home of Elvis Presley, during rock’n’roll’s heyday. With a classic rockabilly beat and all-shook-up lyrics, “Rattled” bursts out of the traps as a fine homage to the music the Wilburys grew up on.

“Not Alone Any More” - Orbison had made his name in the early 60s with heart-on-sleeve hits such as “Crying” and “In Dreams.” Featuring his only lead vocal on the Wilburys’ debut album, “Not Alone Any More” proves that time had done nothing to age his soaring multi-octave range.

“Tweeter And The Monkey Man” - Bob Dylan’s recent solo albums had left some fans wondering if he’d lost his way. “Tweeter And The Monkey Man” assuaged those fears, as the “Desolation Row” songsmith unfurled a convoluted narrative full of his trademark enigmatic characters and cryptic lyrical allusions.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. The Traveling Wilburys originally planned to call themselves The Trembling Wilburys. Whether they were named after George Harrison’s nickname for mistakes made during recording – as in, “We’ll bury them in the mix” – remains apocryphal, according to some.
2. Often considered to be poking fun at Bruce Springsteen, “Tweeter And The Monkey Man” was actually written in honor of New Jersey’s finest. “We weren’t trying to mock anybody,” Tom Petty insisted, adding that Dylan’s lyrics were meant “as praise”…
3. … The group were, however, having fun at the expense of rock critics when they named their second album Traveling Wilburys Vol.3 (there was no Vol.2). “Let’s confuse the buggers,” Harrison said.
4. Roy Orbison died before sessions for Vol.3 began. Reflecting their forced change in personnel, the Wilburys took on a new round of pseudonyms for the album: Boo (Dylan), Spike (Harrison), Muddy (Petty), and Clayton (Lynne).

Words: Jason Draper

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PHOTO CREDIT: UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Feel-good movies don’t get much more uplifting than Rudy, the 1993 biopic about the college football player Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger. Immortalizing its subject’s story of struggle and eventual triumph on the silver screen, Rudy remains fondly remembered as one of the finest sports movies ever made — and is known to make even the most stone-faced football pros cry. 

There’s no denying that Rudy’s power is enhanced by Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack. The late composer had made his name scoring horror, sci-fi and fantasy films in the 70s and 80s, but in 1986 he swapped otherworldly happenings for real-life events when he teamed up with screenwriter Angelo Pizzo and director David Anspaugh to score their movie Hoosiers. Goldsmith’s first foray into sports flicks earned him an Oscar nomination, encouraging the trio to reconvene six years later to turn Ruettiger’s tale into an inspirational biopic with universal appeal.

You don’t need to be a sports fan to be moved while watching an undergraduate underdog achieve his dream of playing for the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team. Nor do you need to be a musical genius to hear why Goldsmith’s score makes the perfect accompaniment to Rudy’s journey.

The main title theme offers a pastoral two minutes before soaring on layers of strings and wordless vocals, indicating that what follows will be a mini epic whose stakes are played out nightly on playing fields and in locker rooms the world over. The opening theme also sets up Goldsmith’s simple but affecting Rudy motif, which, like changes in formation, is rendered in various ways throughout the score, from the pensive cue “A Start” to the more portentous, emotionally-charged “Tryouts.” Across 37 minutes, Goldsmith delivers a master class in emotive storytelling, and by the time “The Final Game” draws to a close, you’ll feel as though you’re being carried off the field yourself.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Variety

As news that Goldsmith’s score would be performed live by a full orchestra at a silver-anniversary screening of Rudy, both the real-life Rudy Ruettiger and his on-screen counterpart, Sean Astin, explain why “it is an absolute right and an absolute truth that this score by Jerry Goldsmith is perfect.”

📰 Den of Geek

What? No Legend?! Nevermind – you know more Jerry Goldsmith film scores than you think, and pop-culture commentators Den Of Geek are all too happy to take a deep dive with you.

📰 Cineoutsider

A touching tribute to the late composer from someone who got to know him personally – well enough, in fact, for Goldsmith to christen him “the man who hated salad.”

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Back On The Field”

With its gently undulating opening, “Back On The Field” channels feelings of pride and wide-eyed wonder before galloping towards a euphoric fanfare. In a little over two minutes, Goldsmith has encapsulated the shifting emotions felt by those who know they’re about to embark on a life-changing journey.

“The Plaque”

Taken at a gentle pace, “The Plaque” fairly shimmers throughout its opening bars before a variation on the main Rudy theme reminds listeners whose story this is. Master that he is, however, Goldsmith ensures audiences make their own connection as he weaves in a subtle use of vocals which is both heavenly yet grounded in humanity.

“Take Us Out”

Much of Goldsmith’s Rudy score displays a restrained grandeur as the composer turns his main motif inside out. On “Take Us Out,” however, he lets fly with a short 1.52 cue designed to get the blood pumping on the fields and in the bleachers. Success may not yet be assured for Rudy, but, by “Take Us Out”’s closing drum roll, it’s certainly within reach.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. Jerry Goldsmith’s original score for the film Legend was cut from the U.S. edit of the movie and replaced by a soundtrack recorded by German experimentalists Tangerine Dream. Goldsmith’s soundtrack is now a cult favorite among fans. 
2. Despite 18 nominations across three and a half decades, Goldstein only received one Academy Award, for his chilling soundtrack to the 1977 horror movie The Omen…
3. … And yet, in the late ’90s, he composed “Fanfare For Oscar,” which was officially used by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
4. Other recipients of a coveted Goldsmith fanfare have included Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Carolco Pictures.
5. Beyond Hollywood, Goldsmith also scored the music for the Soarin’ Over California flight simulator, installed at Disney California Adventure Park (and, renamed Soarin’, at Epcot Center, in Florida), ensuring that his work will reach forever skywards.

Words: Jason Draper

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In the 1960s and 1970s, the sound of the modern blues guitar was defined by the playing styles of three “Kings” of the Blues: Albert, B.B., and Freddie. B.B. had the biggest-selling records, and Freddie was the greatest virtuoso, but Albert was perhaps the most influential of the trio. His blistering, string-bending solos helped shape the playing of guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, while his fusion of blues and Southern soul gave his music a contemporary spin that would resonate with listeners and peers for years to come.

King was born Albert Nelson, probably in Aberdeen, Mississippi, in 1923 or 1924. His early career found him playing all across middle America: first in Osceola, Arkansas, where he formed his first band, the In the Groove Boys, then in Gary, Indiana, where he played drums behind bluesman Jimmy Reed, and also in Lovejoy, Illinois, where he established a solid following just across the river in St. Louis. After unsuccessful recordings on several small labels, his Bobbin Records recording of “Don’t Throw Your Love on Me So Strong” was licensed to King Records in Cincinnati in 1961. The record reached number 14 on the Billboard R&B chart. 

King’s next move, perhaps the most fortuitous of his career, was to Memphis, where he signed with the fledgling Stax Records label. Working with producer/drummer Al Jackson, Jr., the Stax stable of songwriters, and the impeccable rhythm section of Booker T and the MGs, he recorded a string of singles that would become his definitive work.

His 1967 debut album on Stax, Born Under a Bad Sign, provided a new template for the blues. With its funky, focused grooves alongside the crisp counterpoint of the Memphis Horns, King was given the perfect modern setting for his relaxed vocals and pure blues guitar playing. While none of the songs were major hits at the time, the album’s slow-burn influence cannot be underestimated, as it paved a way for a new Southern blues/soul sound that would soon be manifested in hits by artists such as Z.Z. Hill on the Jackson, Mississippi-based Malaco label.

The album prompted promoter Bill Graham to book King at the Fillmore West, where a new audience discovered King, and where his Live Wire/Blue Power album was recorded. Subsequently, he had a major Southern soul hit on Stax with “I’ll Play the Blues for You.”

Born Under a Bad Sign has since been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, while King himself was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Vintage Guitar

A self-taught, left-handed musician who played the guitar upside down and in hotly-debated open tunings, Albert King’s signature instrument was the distinctive Gibson Flying V guitar, or later guitars made in the same style made by luthier Dan Erlewine. In this article, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and actor/guitar collector Steven Seagal discuss three of these guitars.

📰 Culture Sonar

Stevie Ray Vaughan first sat in with Albert King at Antoine’s Club in Austin, Texas, when he was just 22 years old, and the two men developed a lifelong bond. The notoriously grumpy King was proud of his protégé, and the two would later record together on the In Session album.

📰 Guitar.com

One of Albert King’s signature sounds was the double bend, in which he would bend two strings at once, as far up as a full musical step. His upside-down guitar enabled him to push the strings down with what must have been an exceptionally strong grip. This article offers some insight on his technique.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Born Under a Bad Sign”

Guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn play the song’s signature riff in unison, giving this twelve-bar blues a thoroughly modern spin. Funk, rock, and deep blues are all implied in this groundbreaking track. Written by Booker T. Jones and Williams Bell, the song was subsequently recorded by Paul Butterfield, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix, and has become a blues standard.

 “The Hunter”

In other hands, “The Hunter” might have been a novelty song, but King’s stinging guitar and sincere vocal make it ring true. The groove is something else—a syncopated march that would have made a perfect instrumental motif for the MGs. Note especially Steve Cropper’s counterpoint rhythm guitar part during King’s solo and during the vamp.  

“The Very Thought of You”

King’s take on the Ray Noble standard is unexpected, but his voice is perfectly suited to the song. He was not a shouter, nor was his vocal style overtly influenced by gospel tradition, but his lighter approach gave him great flexibility. With his gentle vibrato and clear enunciation, you can even detect a hint of Nat King Cole.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Albert Nelson’s chosen stage name and claim to be B.B. King’s half-brother were early attempts to bolster his career. He also called his guitar “Lucy,” after B.B. King’s “Lucille.” Like Aleck Ford, the second “Sonny Boy Williamson” who borrowed his professional name from the most popular harmonica player of the 1940s, Albert King’s talent did not need the artificial boost. B.B. King was later quoted as graciously saying that Albert was his “brother in the blues.”
• The double-entendre “Crosscut Saw,” credited to R.G. Ford on the LP release of Born Under a Bad Sign, was in fact a remake of Tommy McClennan’s 1941 Bluebird Records hit “Cross Cut Saw Blues.” Albert King’s version of the song is remarkably transformed by the Afro-Cuban groove of Al Jackson’s drums.
• Post-Stax, King and his producers continued to experiment with contemporary styles, including disco. His “Hold Hands with One Another,” with its string-laden Bert deCoteaux arrangement, is an endearing period piece that King pulls off remarkably well. He was adept at learning non-blues material, even as everything he played became imbued with the blues.

Words by Scott Billington 

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Photo by Wally Seawell/ABKCO Records

With his smooth, soaring vocal style and boyish good looks, Sam Cooke was one of the most popular and influential recording artists of the 1950s and 1960s, with a string of enduring Top Forty hits such as “You Send Me,” “Only Sixteen, ” and “Cupid.” He was also a multi-talented force in the record business, as a songwriter and producer, and as a pioneering Black businessperson who headed his own recording and publishing companies. 

Like many rhythm and blues stars of the era, Sam Cooke began his career as a gospel singer, joining the Chicago-based Highway QC’s at age fifteen. His initial rise to fame came in 1950, when he was recruited to be the lead singer of The Soul Stirrers, who were already established as recording and touring artists on the “Gospel Highway,” and signed to Specialty Records. Many of Cooke’s outstanding recordings with the ensemble, including “Jesus Gave Me Water” and “Touch the Hem of His Garment,” were major gospel hits, while Cooke lit up the gospel circuit as if he were a matinee idol.

In 1957, with the support of his father, a pastor at Chicago’s Christ Temple Church, Sam made the transition to secular music with the release of “Lovable,” an adaptation of the gospel song “Wonderful.” Fearing that Cooke would lose his gospel audience, for whom the switch to popular music would be perceived as blasphemous, Specialty owner Art Rupe released the record under the name of Dale Cook. 

While it seems puzzling in retrospect, Rupe did not believe that Sam’s gentle vocal style and often ballad-oriented approach were a hit-making formula. Following an argument with Rupe, Cooke left Specialty for Keen Records, which released his first number one pop hit, “You Send Me.” Specialty subsequently released several outstanding secular singles, this time under Cooke’s real name, including “I’ll Come Running Back to You” and “That’s All I Need to Know.”

The 2 Sides of Sam Cooke, originally released with one LP side each of gospel and pop, is a perfect introduction to the early work of this compelling artist, whose fully formed persona shines in both contexts.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Chicago Tribune

Remembering Sam Cooke, Bronzeville and great ambitions. 

📰 NPR

Tracing the Highs and Tragic End of Sam Cooke.

📰 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Jesus Gave Me Water”

In contrast to the rougher style of singers such as Archie Brownlee (of the Blind Boys of Mississippi) and Alex Bradford that was becoming prevalent in gospel music in the early 1950s, Sam Cooke’s sweet lead on this early a cappella hit brings its message home with his melisma and falsetto trills—a trademark sound that would define his later pop hits. Younger singers such as Aaron Neville also took note.

“Touch the Hem of His Garment”

Sam Cooke’s talent as a songwriter helped give the Soul Stirrers this memorable 1956 hit, with lyrics that retell a familiar Bible story. The group was now recording with full band accompaniment, and this performance makes clear the parallel between the evolving gospel sound, and rhythm and blues vocal groups such as the Five Royales or Hank Ballard and the Midnighters.

“I’ll Come Running Back to You”

With its trendy piano triplets and airy backing vocals, this song was rushed to market by Specialty in 1957 in the wake of the success of “You Send Me.” Another Cooke original, it reached number one Billboard R&B singles chart, and number eighteen on the pop chart. Like many Specialty hits, the track was recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans with the legendary Earl Palmer on drums (who would later record with Cooke in Los Angeles).

DID YOU KNOW?

• Sam Cooke met Aretha Franklin when he was twenty-three and she was twelve, when he was a guest at the Franklin home. It is reputed that he wrote “You Send Me” for her.
• Gospel “quartets” such as the Soul Stirrers may have more than four members. The term evolved to describe a style of close harmony gospel singing, and not the number of singers in the group.
• Sam Cooke added the “e” to his given name of Sam Cook in 1957, to mark his emergence as a popular music artist.
• “A Change Is Gonna Come,” which is often cited as Sam Cooke’s greatest song, was released after his death, when it became one of the anthems of the civil rights movement.

Words by Scott Billington 

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John Fahey was an acoustic music pioneer who called his highly influential style “American Primitive Guitar,” as he melded blues and folk song sources with the sometimes dissonant harmonies of modern classical music, usually in an unaccompanied setting. As a producer and record company co-owner, he nurtured such artists as Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, and George Winston. A blues devotee and dedicated record collector, he satirized the obsessive and overly reverential world of blues scholarship by manifesting the alter-ego Blind Joe Death. Through it all, despite health and substance abuse issues, he pursued ever-evolving creative directions.  

Fahey’s first recordings came as 78 RPM discs in 1958 on his friend Joe Bussard’s Fonotone label. Released either under his own name or as “Blind Thomas,” these early songs were emblematic of his mischievous streak. In 1959, he made his first full album, Blind Joe Death, for his own Takoma label (named for his hometown of Takoma Park, Maryland). One side of the album is credited to Fahey, and the other to his mythical mentor, Blind Joe Death. 

With no marketing experience or plan, he pressed 100 copies and sold them at the gas station where he worked, mailed copies to folklorists, and even seeded a few copies at local thrift stores.  

In 1963, Fahey and fellow roots music enthusiast ED Denson partnered with record distributor Richard Pierce and began running Takoma as an aspiring indie label. After their initial release by bluesman Bukka White, whom Fahey and Denson had “rediscovered,” Fahey recorded a second album of steel-string guitar solos titled Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes. It sold much better than expected, prompting them to reissue Blind Joe Death. However, Fahey reckoned that his guitar chops had improved enough in the intervening time that he would re-record about half the songs on the album. Then, in 1967, he re-recorded a complete third version of Blind Joe Death, this time in stereo. In all three iterations, the music was strikingly dark, emotional, and imbued with ineffable weirdness. 

John Fahey’s records on Takoma, with their psychedelic artwork and lettering, were part of the acoustic soundtrack of the late-1960s counterculture movement. His deftly-played 1968 Christmas album, The New Possibility, became a perennial bestseller, eclipsed only on Takoma by Leo Kottke’s 6 and 12 String Guitar. He went on to record for other labels, and founded Revenant Records with Dean Blackwood in 1996, where he helped release the work of many of his fellow outlier heroes.   

Yet, it is perhaps Blind Joe Death that remains Fahey’s signature statement. The complete music from the second two versions was collected in 1997 on The Legend of Blind Joe Death, with one unreleased song added. Fahey died in 2001 after undergoing heart surgery. 

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Blind Joe Death Liner Notes

The surrealistic and often hilarious liner notes to the 1964 edition of Blind Joe Death also offer genuine insight into Fahey’s music and influences. 

📰 The Guardian

Sean O’Hagan’s career retrospective, John Fahey: The Guitarist Who Was Too Mysterious for the World, offers a concise biography. 

📰 How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life

John Fahey’s semi-autobiographical book, How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life, is a sometimes disorienting encapsulation of the guitarist’s worldview. Reviewer Bill Meyer writes, “The writing flickers with the same black humor and ambivalent mysticism that imbues his music.”  

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Sligo River Blues” 

In both versions (1964 and the slower 1967 take), this gently thumb-picked song rolls along with an easy gait that suggests Mississippi John Hurt, but with an intriguing chord progression that never quite resolves until the end. 

“The Transcendental Waterfall” 

This ten-minute piece moves from one impressionistic movement to another, often using dissonance and dark harmonies. If not for the oddness of many of the bent notes, sections of the composition suggest the blues. It could be argued that pieces such as “The Transcendental Waterfall” anticipate the guitarists who recorded for the New Age label Windham Hill in the 1980s and 1990s (albeit with far less oddness!). 

“Poor Boy Long Ways From Home” 

Fahey’s interpretation of the now well-known Reverend Robert Wilkins composition displays his most traditional side, especially in the exquisite balance between his thumb-picked bass and top-string improvisations. He was a guitarist of the first order. 

DID YOU KNOW?

• During the final years of his life, John Fahey made a number of abstract paintings, 92 of which were posthumously collected in the book John Fahey Paintings. According to Inventory Press’s blurb, “Painting on found poster board and discarded spiral notebook paper, working with tempera, acrylic, spray paint, and magic marker, Fahey’s intuitive approach echoes the action painters and abstract expressionists.” 

• John Fahey was able to locate the legendary blues guitarist Bukka White “in collaboration with the Postal Authorities of the U.S. Government” by mailing a postcard to the musician in care of General Delivery in Aberdeen, Mississippi, a town mentioned in the title of one of White’s songs.   

• Fahey and Takoma Records encouraged the perception of Blind Joe Death as a real musician, whom Fahey claimed played a guitar fashioned from a child’s coffin. Fahey himself would sometimes wear dark glasses and be led onto the stage as if he were the embodiment of his avatar/mentor. 

Words by Scott Billington 

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In the overall scheme of American music, Leo Kottke’s 1969 national debut album, 6- and 12- String Guitar, was both inevitable and a long time coming. By the time Kottke began dedicating himself to the guitar, in the early 1960s, the instrument had become dominant in folk, rock, and blues music, giving him the opportunity to hear musicians as diverse as finger-style blues guitarist Mississippi John Hurt and bluegrass pioneer Lester Flatt. At the same time, the acoustic guitarist John Fahey was synthesizing various roots music styles as the basis for a new and often improvisatory style which came to be called American Primitive Guitar.

Yet, with its driving, thumb-picked bass and rolling, rapid-fire arpeggios, there was no precedent for 6- and 12- String Guitar, and it captivated a generation that was otherwise listening to rock. Kottke’s single-minded devotion to the guitar yielded a jaw-dropping technique and an original repertoire that seemed to spring out of nowhere. Further, he often played twelve-string guitar, and sometimes with a slide. The twelve-string was familiar to blues fans through artists like Lead Belly, and even in popular music as a signature sound for The Byrds, but Kottke played it with a multi-layered complexity that had not been heard before.

After making a live album for a tiny Minneapolis label (aptly named Oblivion Records), he sent a demo tape to John Fahey, whose Takoma Records seemed a suitable home. He recorded the album in a single afternoon in Minneapolis. Over the next few years, it went on to sell over 500,000 copies. Fahey and his manager, Denny Bruce, quickly arranged for Kottke to be signed to Capitol Records, where he enjoyed considerable success, even reaching the pop charts, but 6- and 12- String Guitar was his defining moment, and it has influenced almost every acoustic solo guitarist since, notably Michael Hedges and Tommy Emmanuel.

Leo Kottke continues to record and tour in 2021. His most recent recordings have been duos with bass player and Phish founder Mike Gordon. As he told Guitar Player, “It’s all about appetite, I swear. People talk about things like study, talent, and influence, but none of that means anything if you don’t have the appetite. I’ve spent most of my time sitting in a room playing guitar, and I’m still doing that.”

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Guitar Player

The preface of this 2021 Guitar Player interview makes it clear: “ The GP Hall of Famer’s impact is comparable to an unplugged Hendrix in that Kottke set the tone for the modern acoustic guitar hero.”

📰 Rolling Stone

In this extensive Rolling Stone article, Kottke reveals that he tours solo, piling his guitars into the back of a rental car and setting up his modest equipment himself.

📰 NPR

In this 2018 NPR piece and Mountain Stage concert, Kottke offers his take on the “guitar grimace:” "The reason people screw their face up when they're playing is because they're worried."

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“The Driving Of The Year Nail”

The opening track of 6- and 12- String Guitar is a showpiece for Kottke’s precise, rapid-fire finger picking on the twelve string guitar. While there is a suggestion of the folk/blues playing of, say, Blind Willie McTell, the track announces Kottke’s arrival as a startling new voice with aplomb.

“Vaseline Machine Gun”

From its reharmonized “Taps” opening, “Vaseline Machine Gun” explodes into a slide guitar tour-de-force, this time on six string. It seems as if there are two guitar players on this track: one playing the intricate rhythm figure, and another playing the slide, but it’s all Kottke. Yet, it’s never about pure virtuosity, because it’s the feeling for the tune that keeps the listener involved.

“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”

Kottke slows the album’s pace on this gentle interpretation of the Bach composition—a seemingly effortless performance that conveys the fullness of a chamber ensemble. If he had decided to pursue only classical music and classical guitar technique, he surely would have succeeded.

DID YOU KNOW?

- With its iconic album cover, new fans would ask record store clerks for “the armadillo album.

- When his aggressive playing style led to tendonitis, Kottke was forced to modify his technique. He also eventually abandoned his steel finger picks (but not his thumb pick), preferring to play with his bare fingers.

- Mike Gordon introduced himself to Leo Kottke with a “care package’ that included a new recording of Mike’s overdubbed a bass part on Kottke’s “The Driving of the Year Nail,” from 6- and 12- String Guitar.

Words: Scott Billington

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Step One: be comfortable with who you are. Step Two: show the world how to follow suit. That’s exactly what Sylvester did with Step II, released at the height of the disco craze in 1978. Catch him on TV and you’d see a towering figure with an angelic voice and androgynous flamboyance, singing songs that channeled the hedonism of New York City’s Studio 54, but which carried a deeper significance for an LGBTQ+ audience which was finally – though not unreservedly – finding acceptance in the mainstream.

Amazingly, Sylvester originally envisioned himself as a singer in the blues/R&B tradition, but by the time he put his gospel-inflected vocals to “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” there was no turning back: from here on out, he would be the “Queen Of Disco,” and the epochal track – whose influence arguably outweighs even Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” by sheer force of Sylvester’s personality and what he represented – crowned him the figurehead for a social and sexual enlightenment right at the time when the world needed one. 

Though Sylvester had released three albums before Step II, to the fans who sent that record into the Top 10 of the Billboard Soul LPs chart, the singer appeared as if out of nowhere. “Mighty Real” was the calling card: not only conjuring the white-hot thrill of intimacy on record, it acknowledged what some listeners had long been told was taboo – it doesn’t matter who you’re with, the right connection can be a vitalizing life force. If “Dance (Disco Heat)” keeps the four-to-the-floor euphoria burning, the remainder of Step II also makes room for introspection, letting fans know that, whether they suffered heartbreak, self-doubt or disapproval from the outside world, here was an artist who could speak not only to them, but for them. In doing so, Sylvester ultimately helped them find their own voices.

Step Three? Nothing short of a cultural revolution.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 "What A Star He Would Be Today": The Extraordinary Musical Legacy of Sylvester - The Guardian

“Mighty Real” co-writer James Wirrick reveals how the iconic song came into being, while Sylvester biographer Joshua Gamson explains just what the singer means today.

📰  Love Me Like You Should: The Brave And Bold Sylvester - Amazon Music

A 15-minute mini-documentary stuffed with archival photos and video footage, Sylvester’s impact on the burgeoning Pride movement of the 70s is explored with the help of his sister and Cockettes pianist Peter Mintun.

📰  Disco Singer Sylvester Confronts AIDS Without Any Regrets - Los Angeles Times

In an interview conducted just months before his death, Sylvester speaks bravely and candidly about his fatal illness: “I’d like to think that by going public myself with this, I can give other people courage to face it.”

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“I Took My Strength From You” - Sylvester’s was never a blindly hedonistic take on disco, and this cut offers six minutes of soul-searching time out. If “Mighty Real” is an expression of individual liberation, this is its flipside – an ode to community and togetherness.

“Was It Something I Said” - Starting out with a catty back-and-forth between Two Tons O’ Fun (aka The Weather Girls) demanding all the hot gossip (“Girl, it’s a mess!” “Uh-oh, you gotta tell me about this one!”), “Was It Something I Said” finds Sylvester blindsided by a breakup, but refusing to accept less than his true worth.

“Just You And Me Forever” - Arguably the single that should have been, “Just You And Me Forever” catches Sylvester in full torch-ballad mode, glistening under the mirror ball as his falsetto soars to the stars.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” featured in the soundtrack to Milk, the 2008 biopic about San Francisco politician and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk – a close friend of Sylvester’s – which starred Sean Penn in the lead role.
2. Some of Sylvester’s earliest shows were as part of the San Francisco-based Cockettes, a drag troupe with whom he regularly performed homages to inspirations such as jazz singer Billie Holiday and vaudeville star Josephine Baker.
3. Despite same-sex marriage being illegal in the US in the early ’70s, Sylvester staged his own wedding to Michael Lyons in Golden Gate Park’s Shakespeare Garden, pioneering a cultural – if not official – acceptance for LGBTQ+ and mixed-race relationships.
4. Sylvester features on one of the 40 plaques that makes up The Legacy Project’s Legacy Walk, a memorial in the “Boystown” area of Chicago, dedicated to recognizing LGBTQ+ icons and their contributions to world culture.
5. As stipulated in his will, all royalties from Sylvester’s music continue to be split evenly between the HIV/AIDS charities Project Open Hand and the AIDS Emergency Fund.

Stream Step II on your preferred music platform via the button below.

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Before emerging as a bandleader in his own right, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane had played a key role in rising trumpeter Miles Davis’ group (from October 1955 to April 1957) and augmented pianist Thelonious Monk’s live quartet (through mid-to-late 1957). A heroin addiction led to his ejection from Davis’ group, however, while contractual obligations limited his studio time with Monk. If question marks hung over the saxophonist’s career – could he ever follow his mentors and steer his own group into new territory? – a crucial stint with the independent jazz label Prestige erased all doubt. In a brief but fruitful 14-month partnership with Bob Weinstock’s label, Coltrane developed his “sheets of sound” style at such a rate that even outtake material offered essential insights into a mind working in overdrive. Released in early 1961, three years – and, in creative terms, another lifetime – after his final Prestige session, Lush Life finds Coltrane working away at several new discoveries.

Culled from three sessions at producer Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio –May 31 and August 16, 1957, and January 10, 1958– Lush Life’s five tracks find him honing that signature sound while edging into territory that he’d later explore further. At 14 minutes, the album’s brooding, lyrical title track is an early landmark in Coltrane’s career, his tenor lines proving that he could play with a restrained majesty not often associated with the torrent of notes he was known to deliver. He’d revisit the tune in 1963, with crooner Johnny Hartman, finding yet more to say with what was already a tour de force performance.

Capturing Coltrane during an extremely fertile period in his career – his legendary Blue Train album was recorded between the second and third sessions – Lush Life may have been compiled from disparate recordings in need of a home, but it stands as a rounded work in its own right: more giant steps from a flourishing talent discovering how to express himself.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Lush Life Review - DownBeat

The legendary jazz magazine’s original album review, from 1961. Nothing short of five stars for “the outstanding new artist to gain prominence during the last half decade.”

📰 Coltrane '58 Nick Phillips Interview

Grammy-nominated producer Nick Phillips reveals what it took to compile the 8-LP box set Coltrane ’58: The Prestige Recordings, which traces the evolution of the saxophonist’s landmark “sheets of sound” playing style.

📰 1958 Interview With John Coltrane - Slought Gallery

The Philadelphia-based gallery presents the full audio recording of a rare interview with Coltrane, originally excerpted in The Jazz Review in 1959.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Like Someone In Love” - Pianist Red Garland didn’t show for the August 1957 session, so Coltrane led drummer Art Taylor and bassist Earl May as a trio on what later became the first three songs on Lush Life. The intimate line-up evoked a perfect late-night vibe on the ballad material, particularly album opener “Like Someone In Love.” Without Garland performing any melodic support, Coltrane leads the melody in an assured, laidback fashion, highlighting his growth in confidence throughout the Prestige era.

“Trane’s Slo Blues” - A perfect example of how Trane would, as DownBeat put it, “worry” an idea “from every side, returning to it again and again (sometimes in another piece) until convincing himself… it has been wrung dry.” Taken at a slower tempo during the same 16 August 1957 session that resulted in this recording, a variation on the “Trane’s Slo Blues” theme would appear in “Slowtrane,” which surfaced on the 1966 Prestige collection The Last Trane. 

“I Hear A Rhapsody” - With fellow-Miles Davis alumni Red Garland and Paul Chambers on piano and bass, respectively, and Albert Heath sitting in on drums, this jazz standard finds Coltrane and co coming close to breaking a sweat. The only Lush Life track from the May 1957 session, it’s not only an uptempo album closer but, coming after a run of tracks recorded at later sessions, looks over its shoulder at just how far Coltrane had come in a matter of months.

DID YOU KNOW?

• DownBeat magazine coined the term “sheets of sound” in a review of the saxophonist’s 1958 Prestige album, Soultrane.
• Coltrane returned to Miles Davis’ group for a second stint, from October 1958 to April 1960; he performed on the best-selling jazz album of all time: Kind Of Blue.
• The Prestige sessions yielded so much material, Bob Weinstock issued almost three times as many albums after Coltrane left than during the saxophonist’s time with the label.
• The “sheets of sound” style wasn’t always called for. After Coltrane admitted to finding it hard to end his solos, Miles Davis suggested, “Try taking the saxophone out of your mouth.”
• Coltrane was the head of a jazz dynasty: son Ravi followed his father’s footsteps as a saxophonist; wife Alice was a pioneering pianist and harpist whose music spanned jazz, New Age and classical styles. Her grand-nephew Steven Ellison is better known as experimental electronic producer Flying Lotus.

Purchase Lush Life on vinyl below.

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Words: Jason Draper

More than a masterpiece, Brilliant Corners was the culmination of a carefully devised plan to reintroduce Thelonious Monk as modern jazz’s preeminent composer. Immediately hailed by critics and Monk’s musical peers as a major new work, the album played a key role in changing the trajectory of his career after years of being undervalued as a pianist and sidelined as an eccentric. 

Part of the loose confederation of players who forged the new idiom of bebop at Minton’s Playhouse in mid-1940s Harlem, Monk was both central to the modernist movement and resolutely apart. The compositions he recorded for Blue Note between 1947-48 earned him some renown, but few colleagues tackled his knotty harmonies and tricky rhythmic settings. But he was better known for his unusual behavior, quirks that sometimes stemmed from undiagnosed manic depression.

The loss of his cabaret card in 1951—due to narcotics bust where Monk refused to testify against his close friend Bud Powell—locked him out of Manhattan nightclubs. Gigs were few and far between throughout the first half of the 1950s. Signed to Prestige Records, he recorded sporadically and grew increasingly frustrated as his career languished while labelmates flourished, particularly the Modern Jazz Quartet and Miles Davis (one of the few artists at the time who regularly played and recorded Monk’s tunes).

Ready for a change, Monk signed with Riverside Records in 1955 after producer Orrin Keepnews famously paid off the pianist’s outstanding debt to Prestige (108.27). Rather than trying to capitalize on Monk’s far-out image, Keepnews presented him as a visionary firmly in jazz’s mainstream with two trio sessions: 1955’s Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington and 1956’s standards session The Unique Thelonious Monk. Both earned strong reviews, though some critics complained about the lack of Monk originals.

Featuring drum great Max Roach and bassist Oscar Pettiford, who anchored the two previous albums, Brilliant Corners presented Monk as a composer of the highest order. Sonny Rollins, the era’s dominant tenor saxophonist, was joined by esteemed trumpeter Clark Terry and unsung, blues-drenched altoist Ernie Henry. The album introduced three new Monk standards, but the extraordinarily intricate title track was the project’s signature achievement. Refusing to share sheet music of the unusual 30-bar form, Monk insisted the group keep attempting to get a complete run through, which almost led to a physical confrontation with Pettiford. The final result was stitched together by Keepnews from 25 incomplete takes. A few splices are audible, but what stands out is the way Rollins, Henry and Monk himself extrapolate on the theme, navigating the confounding harmonic leaps with grit and grace.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 "The Secret Life of Thelonious Monk" - The Atlantic

Douglas Gorney conducts a smart interview with Robin D.G. Kelley, author of the authoritative biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original.

📰 "Thelonious Sphere Monk Centennial: Primary and Secondary Documents" - Do the M@th

Pianist Ethan Iverson offers a contrarian tour through Monk’s discography.

📰 "Thelonious Monk's 25 Tips for Musicians" - Open Culture

Soprano saxophone great Steve Lacy, the first person to record an album devoted to Monk’s music, compiled a list of advice he received from the Maestro.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE...

“Pannonica” - A luscious, oozy ballad dedicated to the British-born Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, Monk’s close friend, patron and protector, the lovely piece features Monk on the bell-like celeste on the intro and outro, an impromptu switch made when he saw the instrument at Reeves Sound Studios. The band sounds more comfortable on the piece than most of the album’s other tracks, with Rollins playing a gruffly sensuous solo that exemplifies his deep connection with Monk’s music.

“Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are” - A 13-minute blues romp that takes its oft misspelled title from the Bolivar Hotel, where Pannonica de Koenigswarter (known as Nica to her friends) lived and Monk often found refuge. He and Rollins rehearsed much of the Brilliant Corners music there, but it’s Ernie Henry who sets the mood here, playing a searing, smeary solo that’s a blistering highlight of his all-too-short career.

“I Surrender, Dear” (Harry Barris & Gordon Clifford) - The hit song that launched Bing Crosby’s solo career in 1931 proves to be an ideal vehicle for a solo Monk excursion. On an album defined by densely voiced horns and unorthodox instrumentation, this rippling ballad performance arrives like a sun-dappled clearing in the midst of overgrown woods, displaying Monk’s singular, percussive touch and thoughtful phrasing.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Thelonious Monk prevailed upon Orrin Keepnews to record alto saxophonist Ernie Henry, but only one of his three excellent Riverside albums were released before his death at 31 from a heroin overdose.
• Clark Terry’s 1958 Riverside album In Orbit marked Thelonious Monk’s last appearance as a sideman, a gesture the pianist made out of his abiding respect for the trumpeter.
• Coleman Hawkins, the father of the tenor saxophone in the 1920s, and John Coltrane, the most influential tenor player of the 1960s, memorably joined forces on Monk’s classic 1957’s Monk’s Music.
• Three weeks after the epochal 1964 arrival of the Beatles in New York City, Thelonious Monk was the subject of a Time Magazine cover story on Feb. 28 titled “The Loneliest Monk.”

Listen to Brilliant Corners in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform below.  

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Words: Andrew Gilbert

1968 was a wondrous year of creativity and reinvention for Latin music in New York. Fania Records was at the epicenter of this musical revolution, releasing debut albums by Willie Colón, the Fania All Stars and Ismael Miranda’s initial outing with Larry Harlow’s Orchestra Harlow. As if that wasn’t enough, 1968 was also the year when Nuyorican conguero, bandleader and songwriter Ray Barretto began his collaboration with Fania, releasing the first of many classic LPs that would forever change the sound of salsa and Latin Soul. Produced by Harvey Averne – a successful Fania artist in his own right - Acid was Barretto’s much heralded debut for the label, a fully formed manifesto of creative freedom and tropical frenzy.

At the time, the Afro-Caribbean genre was in a wonderful state of flux. On the one hand, established bandleaders continued favoring the trusted tenets of mambo, son montuno and cha cha chá. At the same time, a new generation of rebellious youngsters – most of them born in the U.S. to Latino parents - launched the boogaloo sound, an insanely flavorful fusion of R&B, Soul and Latin rhythms.

Barretto turned 39 in 1968. An eclectic musician – he had already recorded jazz sessions with Herbie Mann and Tito Puente, his own charanga albums and a funky LP of 007 movie themes – he struck an inspired balance between tradition and futurism on Acid, blending salsa with boogaloo, Latin jazz and a dash of psychedelia.

Even though he would quickly leave boogaloo behind and embrace the hardcore salsa explosion of the ‘70s, Acid defined both the stylistic approach and core group of collaborators that would accompany Barretto during the artistic peak of his career. With the effusive vocalizing of Pete Bonet taking care of the English tracks, future salsa star Adalberto Santiago lends his authentic boricua flavor to the numbers sung in Spanish. Orestes Vilató unleashes his trademark percussive attack on the timbales, whereas Barretto himself is the rare exception of a conga player who could steal the spotlight if he so wanted but chooses to stay on top of the groove, never engaging in frivolous soloing.

Throughout the ‘70s, Barretto released one masterpiece after the other. Acid finds him at the beginning of his Fania journey – a record seeped in innocence and fever.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Ray Barretto: A Man & His Music - Fania.com

Latin music expert Aurora Flores wrote these insightful liner notes to the definitive Barretto compilation.

📰 Before & After: Ray Barretto - Larry Applebaum Blog

A lovely interview with Barretto offering his thoughts on a variety of musicians and genres.

📰 Ernesto Lechner Talks Salsa Explosion - Impose Magazine

A story about discovering Fania Records and falling deeply in love with the music.  

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Sola Te Dejaré” – Ignore the typically misogynistic lyrics and focus instead on the incredibly tight groove that Barretto generates on this timeless salsa scorcher.

“Mercy, Mercy Baby” – The hypnotic bass line, the funky piano, the frantic vocalizing. Barretto generated Soul magic like no other bandleader.

“Espíritu Libre” – After dazzling his audience with seven brief dance tracks, Barretto leads Acid into a majestic finale with this eight-minute instrumental descarga filled with conga accents and dissonant brass riffs.

DID YOU KNOW?

• While innovating one of the most beloved genres in Latin music history, NYC salsa musicians were also busy trying to make ends meet. Cuban trumpet player Roberto Rodríguez worked as the manager of an auto shop, yet never missed a gig or rehearsal with Barretto.
• Even though he gigged and recorded albums at a breakneck pace, Barretto also found the time to play congas with his label’s mega-orchestra, the Fania All Stars.
• Barretto loved salsa but never forgot his lifelong love of jazz. In 1973, he shocked fans by releasing The Other Road – a then misunderstood session of jazz-rock in the mode of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever.

Listen to Acid in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform below.  

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Words: Ernesto Lechner

By the time of the release of 19-year-old Joan Baez’s eponymous debut album in 1960, folk music had become firmly established as part of the American popular music landscape. In previous decades, artists such as Burl Ives and the Weavers had achieved chart success with interpretations of folk and traditional songs such as “The Blue Tail Fly” and “Irene Goodnight.” The Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” was a major hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958.

Yet, Joan Baez was something wholly different, even as she tapped a similar pool of traditional material. Her pristine and pitch-perfect voice bore a gravitas that the sing-along nature of her folk music predecessors often lacked. She was the first star of the “folk revival” of the 1960s, becoming a counterculture heroine whose political activism was mirrored in her music. Her impact and striking presence landed her on the cover of Time magazine in 1963.

Born to a Mexican-American father (a prominent, Stanford-educated physicist) and a Scottish-American mother, Baez and her family moved frequently before settling in Massachusetts in 1958, where she became part of the thriving Cambridge folk music scene. Influenced by Pete Seeger, she had learned to play guitar while in high school, and began performing at venues such as the celebrated Club 47. After her first appearance at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, she was signed to Vanguard Records.

Joan Baez was an immediate hit, eventually reaching gold status. The sparse production by Fred Hellerman (of the Weavers) places Baez’s voice front-and-center, with accompaniment from her own guitar, or with Hellerman sometimes adding his own. While Baez would become known for her astute ear in discovering songs by up-and-coming writers such as Bob Dylan, the album is comprised primarily of traditional songs. Her young, vibrato-sustained voice delivers them with unaffected sincerity, making them seem as timely and relevant as the latest pop song.

Joan Baez has enjoyed a long and ever-creative musical career, while her voice as an activist for the disenfranchised, for peace, and for environmental causes has never quieted. Her numerous accolades include a 2007 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Through it all, the stark beauty of her debut release has never lost its appeal.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Joan Baez: Singer, activist, peacenik, lover, legend - The Guardian 

Details of Baez's involvement with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 

📰 8 Things You Didn't Know About Joan Baez - PBS

Written on the occasion of her 75th birthday, this article reveals some surprising aspects of her career. 

📰 David Harris & Joan Baez, 1967-2014 - Photography Archive, Stanford University

This gallery of photos by Bob Fitch offers a glimpse of Baez's life during the years of her marriage to peace activist and draft protester David Harris. 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Silver Dagger” - This traditional song, with origins in Britain (as “Drowsy Sleeper”) became one of Baez’s signature pieces. In the song’s story, a mother warns her daughter of the perils of marriage and of the untrue nature of men in general.

“House of the Rising Sun” - This traditional song was first recorded by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster in 1933, but its roots go back further. When Baez flips genders, the song becomes especially poignant. The song was a number one hit for The Animals only a few years later.

“El Preso Numero Nueve” - This song  is similar to the those in the “murder ballad” tradition of the Appalachian mountains, in which the protagonist commits a crime of passion and must pay with his life. Baez would later record a full album in Spanish, which she spoke fluently.

DID YOU KNOW?

• In 1951, Baez’s family spent a year in Baghdad, Iraq, where her father taught physics for a UNESCO-sponsored project. Her parents wrote a book about the experience, for which 10-year-old Joan provided illustrations.

• Following her arrest for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California,Baez was incarcerated for over a month. On January 14, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King visited her in prison.

• Vanguard Records was founded primarily as a classical label by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon, who harbored no expectations of having a hit record. Joan Baez became their best-selling artist, with sales that yielded a total of four gold records for the label.

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Words: Scott Billington

In ways that few gospel-based groups could have imagined, the music of the Staple Singers broke barriers of genre and popularity, first with folk-leaning songs that amplified the message of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s, and then with a string of soul-oriented Top Forty and Rhythm and Blues hits in the 1970s. Their crowning achievement of that era, and one of the most enduring albums released by Memphis-based Stax Records, is Be Altitude: Respect Yourself.

The group came together in Chicago when Roebuck “Pops” Staples and his young children—Cleotha, Mavis, Pervis, and Yvonne—began performing at local gospel shows. A signature sound was Pops’ bluesy and tremolo-laden guitar, a legacy of his “country” roots in the Mississippi Delta. They secured a recording deal with Vee-Jay Records and soon had a major gospel hit, in 1956, with “Uncloudy Day.” Lead vocals on their recordings were usually shared by Pops and Mavis, whose husky contralto has proven to be one of the most enduring voices in American music.

In the 1960s, the Staple Singers often performed at rallies with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., playing songs such as Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” and Pops’ original compositions like “Why (Am I Treated So Bad).” “That came to be Dr. King's favorite,” Mavistold National Public Radio. Then, they made a bold transition, signing with Stax, and making records that fully embraced the modern Southern soul style.

Unlike many popular artists with gospel roots, the Staple Singers never “crossed over” all the way, almost always choosing songs with positive or spiritual messages. Such is the case with “Respect Yourself,” written by R&B stalwarts Luther Ingram and Sir Mack Rice as an affirmation of Black pride. “I’ll Take You There,” the number one Billboard pop hit that followed, promises a sort of utopia where “ain’t nobody worried,” even if Mavis’s sensual vocal might lead the listener to wonder which kind of paradise it might actually be.

Be Altitude: Respect Yourself, with backing by the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, reflects a golden era of recording, when emerging multi-track technology enabled produce Al Bell to capture live performances, and then to overdub The Memphis Horns, along with additional vocals and instrumental sounds. It is a masterpiece.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Mavis Staples talks to NPR about the group's early touring in the South:

📰 Terry Manning recalls the details of the Be Altitude: Respect Yourself Sessions:

📰 Memphis Music Hall of Fame

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“I'll Take You There” - At the time of these sessions, producer All Bell had recently traveled to the Caribbean, bringing back several reggae records. Thus, the introduction and melodic bass line for “I’ll Take You There” were borrowed from “The Liquidator” by the Harry J All Stars. Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood plays the part with authority, but the band does not play a typical reggae groove, instead finding an even slinkier pocket. The same bass motif was subsequently copied by Louisiana zydeco artist Rockin’ Sidney for his popular “Joy to the South."

“Name the Missing Word” - With its bluesy introduction and deep, reggae-influenced groove, “Name the Missing Word” is a vocal tour-de-force for Mavis, who delivers the song as an impassioned sermon, especially as the backing vocals urge her to “say it” as the song vamps out (although she never does say the word). The song was written by the “We Three” team of Homer Banks, Bettye Crutcher and Raymond Jackson, who were also responsible for hits such as Johnny Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love.”

“We the People” - Written by Booker T. Jones (of Booker T and the MGs) and Carl Smith, “We the People” had a surprising reprisal in 2020, when it was used after President Joe Biden’s closing speech at the Democratic National Convention. With its instantly singable chorus and message of racial unity (along with the cautionary line, “Hot pants in style, don't let our world go wild.”) set against an uplifting groove, there could have been no better song choice.

DID YOU KNOW?

• In the 1960s, Bob Dylan proposed to Mavis Staples, but she turned him down. The two had become an item for a brief period, after getting to know one another at several Newport Folk Festivals and other events. They won a GRAMMY® together in 2003 for “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” and toured together (each with their own band) in 2016.

• Producer Al Bell’s assistant and mixing engineer on Be Altitude: Respect Yourself was Terry Manning, who later engineered albums by artists such as Z.Z. Top and George Thorogood, among many others. In 1992, he became Island Records founder Chris Blackwell’s partner in the highly-regarded Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas. Terry played the Moog synthesizer overdub on “Respect Yourself.”

• After the Staple Singers stopped performing as a group in the 1980s, it was not only Mavis who continued recording. While in his late seventies, Pops Staples made two highly-regarded albums on which his guitar playing again assumed a more prominent role. On most of the Stax sessions, the guitars were played by studio musicians such as Steve Cropper, Jimmy Johnson, and Eddie Hinton.

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Words: Scott Billington

Sixties garage-rock history is littered with one-off albums and standalone singles whose creators burned bright before fading into obscurity. Collectively, they’re now the invigorating evidence of a vibrant, short-lived scene that paved the way for punk while also offering a bratty tangent to the burgeoning psychedelic movement. The Sonics, the Monks, the Seeds – all namechecked by the garage-rock agitators that followed in their wake, it took the most committed fans to do the detective work and discover more about the musicians behind the sounds. When the Music Machine released their single “Talk Talk,” in November 1966, a month ahead of their debut album, (Turn on) the Music Machine, they immediately took their place alongside these garage-rock legends.

Two minutes of pummeled drums, fuzzed-up guitar, head-spinning organ and frontman Sean Bonniwell’s snarling vocals - “Can’t seem to talk about/The things that bother me/Seems to be/What everybody has/Against me” – “Talk Talk” captured the perennial disaffection of younger generations who feel persecuted by adults that never seem to get it.

The song was recorded in just two takes and still explodes with all the energy of a band working in the white-hot crucible of creation. After “Talk Talk” became a surprise Top 20 hit, the Music Machine’s label, Original Sound, rushed the band back into the studio to try and recapture the lightning. On December 31^st, (Turn on) the Music Machinehit the shelves. A mix of covers and Bonniwell-penned originals, it remains a fascinating insight into how these original garage-rock bands captured the zeitgeist before – seemingly inevitably – imploding. At just 32 minutes, almost half the album’s songs were covers apparently recorded with a view to gaining spins at an LA nightclub; among them were Neil Diamond’s “Cherry, Cherry,” the Beatles’ “Taxman” and Ma Rainey’s ’20s blues classic “See See Rider.” (Turn on) the Music Machine’s original numbers, however, capture the band at their best: complex, sometimes harrowing songs suggesting that, when The Music Machine flipped the switch, they were a unique proposition among a bunch of misfit bands.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 The Music Machine Interview with Sean Bonniwell - It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine 

The architect of the Music Machine discusses his songwriting process, and how “Talk Talk” “spread like a disease from outer space.”

📰 The Music Machine - Interview With Organist Dough Rhodes - Part 3 - Craig Morrison

“Bonniwell wasn’t into psychedelics. He didn’t smoke dope and he didn’t take LSD,” the keyboardist reveals, explaining why the Music Machine didn’t identify with their psychedelic contemporaries.

📰 The Music Machine: The Ultimate Turn On - PopMatters

PopMatters makes the case that the Music Machine were “every bit as good and innovative” as their legendary contemporaries the Velvet Underground. Read and believe!

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Some Other Drum” - The rare Bonniwell original that doesn’t go for your throat, its lyrics are nevertheless in keeping with Bonniwell’s distressed worldview, even as the arrangement sounds like it wants to be a sunshine-pop song. Points the way to some of the more pronounced psychedelia of the band’s second – and final – album, The Bonniwell Music Machine.

“The People In Me” - Bonniwell’s non sequitur lyrics are perfectly matched by the band’s falling-apart-at-the-seams performance – fitting for a song that speaks to fractured psyches, as if predicting the hippie burn-out a full three years before the Rolling Stones’ Altamont Speedway Free Festival called an end to the ’60s.

“96 Tears” - ? and the Mysterians beat the Music Machine to it when they topped the Billboard Hot 100 with this garage-rock groove in August 1966. No matter. The Music Machine up the stakes with their version, Rhodes stabbing away at his keyboard and guitarist Mark Langdon roughing up ? and co’s effort with a scuzzy guitar line.

“Come On In” - Doug Rhodes’ cascading keyboard and drummer Ron Edgar’s jittery hi-hat set up a haunting number that finds Bonniwell at turns alluring and menacing. “Come on in, the water’s fine,” he promises as the track slinks to who-knows-where. “Don’t play hopscotch with your life, you little fool/… The steering wheel inside your head has come apart.” Is he offering safety or peril? This song should have closed the album.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Sean Bonniwell’s first band was a folk-rock trio called the Noblemen.
• After releasing a solo album in 1969, Sean Bonniwell became a self-proclaimed guru, stepping away from music to study Eastern mysticism and meditation.
• Having achieved cult-classic status, Bonniwell lived in relative obscurity up until his death in 2011, though he once claimed to have written over 300 songs after the Music Machine folded.
• The Music Machine’s cover of the Beatles’ “Taxman” alters George Harrison’s reference to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, instead namechecking then US President Lyndon Johnson.
• Avant-garde rock saboteurs the Residents covered a snippet of “Talk Talk” on their 1976 album, The Third Reich’n’Roll.

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Words: Jason Draper

Few film composers have the range and scope of Hans Zimmer. As comfortable scoring epic, atmospheric soundtracks for moody blockbusters (The Dark Knight, Inception) and kaleidoscopic wonders for peak-era Disney classics (The Lion King) as he is small-scale motifs for leftfield romantic thrillers (True Romance), his soundtracks are like no other. Even when it came to seasonal romcoms The Holiday, his unique ability to weave drama and intimacy resulted in a score that deserves to be better known.

A transatlantic affair in which Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swap houses for the holidays, only to find their love lives upended by Jack Black and Jude Law, The Holiday demanded several things at once from Hans Zimmer’s score: Christmas warmth, relationship drama, and emotional payoff. From the opening five notes of the soundtrack album, it’s clear that Zimmer handled the first challenge with ease. Alert listeners will hear a five-note refrain that subtly references The Pogues’ perennial Christmas classic, “Fairytale Of New York.” Stick on the opening cue, “The Maestro,” and quietly sing “It was Christmas Eve, babe” along with Zimmer’s piano, and it won’t be long before you hear the reference weave its way through other cues, like “Kayak For One” and “The Musketeers.” Not that Zimmer needs to rely on other people’s songs to conjure a Christmas feeling. “Dream Kitchen” shimmers with sleigh bells, staccato melodies, and oven-side warmth suitable for cozy nights at home with loved ones.

The score is rife with relationship drama and emotional payoff, too: Zimmer, along with collaborators – Brazilian composer Heitor Pereia, Latin/jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert and electropop singer-songwriter Imogen Heap among them – created a work that ranges from intimate jazzy guitar runs to mini-epic string swells, as if tracing the ebbs and flows of burgeoning relationships and the complications that can befall them.

Released in time for the 2006 holidays, The Holiday was the box office money-raker you would expect from its big-name cast, and fans continue to revisit it every Yuletide season. Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack, however, is a life-affirming score that isn’t just for Christmas. 

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Hans Zimmer Breaks Down His Legendary Career - Vanity Fair 

From moving to London in the ’80s, to scoring Blue Planet II, Zimmer discusses highlights from his career. “I’m still hunting down the great tune I’ve never written… I just know I could do better,” he says.

📰 Billie Eilish on Working with Hans Zimmer on Bond Theme Song and her Rise to Stardom - Nightline

In collaboration with Hans Zimmer and her brother, Finneas, Billie Eilish became the youngest artist in history to write a James Bond theme when she penned “No Time to Die.” “I just loved it from the moment I heard it,” Zimmer reveals.

📰 The 10 Best Hans Zimmer Soundtracks - Classic FM

From big-hitters like The Lion King and The Dark Knight, to his often-forgotten score for True Romance, the classical-music experts give their opinion on Zimmer’s greatest works.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Kayak For One” - A light-hearted 90-second interlude in which gentle bossa nova is punctuated by subtle vocals and underpinned by soft electronic babbles, “Kayak For One” is the only Holiday cue scored by Ryeland Allison. Listen for a nylon-stringed guitar picking out that five-note Pogues nod.

“Anything Can Happen” - Co-created by Zimmer and Heitor Pereia, at just 48 seconds, “Anything Can Happen” is the shortest cue on The Holiday, but it packs a wealth of emotion into the dreamy rise and fall of its strings. Zimmer’s piano and some barely-there synth washes slowly transform the piece, underlining the title’s suggestion that new discoveries are just around the corner.

“Verso E Prosa” - Pereia takes the reins on this, one of only two vocal cues on The Holiday’s soundtrack album. Back to the bossa nova themes that surface throughout, it’s an alluring piece enhanced by playful trumpet.

“Cry” - Credited to Zimmer, Pereia and the Emmy-nominated Lorne Balfe, “Cry” provides the emotional payoff The Holiday’s score inevitably builds to. A tasteful inclusion of electric guitars gives the cue a bit of extra heft, before that recurring motif is picked out one last time, on solo piano.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Hans Zimmer is an entirely self-taught musician (he has said he was “thrown out of eight schools”).
• Ennio Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West inspired him to become a composer.
• Zimmer worked with the Buggles in the late 70s and made a cameo appearance in the promo clip for their UK No.1 hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
• He also produced a song for goth-punks the Damned, “The History of the World (Part 1),” earning himself an “Over-Produced by Hans Zimmer” credit in the process.
• Zimmer won an Oscar for his work on Disney’s The Lion King, and to date has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards, receiving at least one nod in each decade since the ’80s.

Listen to The Holiday: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below.  

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Words: Jason Draper

There’s a scene in Wayne’s World in which erstwhile metalheads Wayne and Garth find themselves in front of a blue screen, pretending to travel through major US cities, soaking up local culture along the way – New York (“Let’s go to a Broadway show”), Hawaii (“Pass the poi”), Texas (“Let’s raise and rope broncos”)… Delaware…? (“Hi… I’m in Delaware.”) Seems they forgot one important thing about the Diamond State: the heavy-duty blues of George Thorogood and the Destroyers, best known for giving the world “Bad to the Bone” in 1982, and who, in October 1977, released a self-titled debut album that was as much a statement of intent as it was a love letter to some of the blues’ founding fathers.

Not that George Thorogood and the Destroyers found the then 27-year-old guitarist treating his source material with dainty fingers. From the torrent of notes that signals album opener “You Got to Lose” on, this is a guy who’s wrestling the blues back from the British Invasion acts of the ’60s and supercharging it for the punk era. Elmore James, Robert Johnson and Earl Hooker all get the Destroyers Blitzkrieg – Thorogood’s razor-sharp riffing and Jeff Simon’s primitive drumming, with Ron Smith’s supporting guitar and Bill Blough’s bass thickening the sound – but it’s on the medley of John Lee Hooker’s “Rent House Rap” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” that George Thorogood and The Destroyers deliver their first classic. “So many people could’ve done incredible versions,” Thorogood later told MusicRadar of the song. “I said, ‘We gotta beat these people to the punch.’” And they did – with a knockout blow that sends the listener reeling. 

It would take a year for George Thorogood and the Destroyers to see some US chart action (with their 1978 sophomore album, Move It On Over), but it’s here that Thorogood and co set out their stall, with an array of blues stylings that reveal Thorogood’s wide range, from electric to acoustic blues, slide guitar and even a surprise ballad, in the shape of “I’ll Change My Style.”

Thorogood didn’t so much change his style as build upon it in the decades that followed; in 2015, a stripped-back remix of the album, titled George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, presented the master recordings without Bill Blough’s bass overdubs. Meanwhile, if the two original songs Thorogood snuck onto George Thorogood and the Destroyers, “Homesick Boy” and “Delaware Slide,”suggested one area where he initially needed development, he was at least on the right track. In just a few years he’d pen “Bad to the Bone,” forever gifting the blues a new piece of DNA. This album is where that bloodline started.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 MTV's "Rock Influences" interview, 1984 - YouTube 

In conversation with Karla DeVito (as featured in Meat Loaf’s “Paradise" by the Dashboard Light” video), Thorogood discusses why the blues “is an emotion more than a technique.”

📰 George Thorogood Picks His 5 Biggest Musical Influences - Music Aficionado

Robert Johnson? John Lee Hooker? The Rolling Stones? Bo Diddley? Chuck Berry? Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. “This music didn’t change my life. It made it,” Thorogood says. “And I’m so thankful for that.”

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Kind Hearted Woman” - Showcasing Thorogood’s acoustic slide guitar skills, this take on the Robert Johnson 1939 original, “Kind Hearted Women Blues,” finds the fledgling guitarist in an unusually reflective mood, fully inhabiting the song’s lament.

“Ride On Josephine” - Mastering the primitive shuffle of the Bo Diddley beat, the Destroyers lock into a tribal groove over which Thorogood lays sinewy guitar lines. A lesser-known song by the man born Ellas McDaniel, it’s fair to say that George and co claim it as their own.

“John Hardy” - A classic murder ballad from the ’20s, “John Hardy” was based on the real-life killing of a man named Thomas Drews, after he got into an argument with the titular murderer. With Thorogood switching back to acoustic guitar and blowing harmonica throughout, this version reveals that Thorogood could step into the folk tradition as easily as he could the blues.

“Delaware Slide” -“I grew up with rock’n’roll but these blues wouldn’t leave me alone,” Thorogood sings – a fitting observation for one of his debut album’s two original songs. Frenetic slide guitar, a rough-hewn breakdown and the leader’s full commitment power this electrifying eight-minute tribute to the music that made him, right through to the end of the album. What we want to know is: how long did they keep going after that fade?

DID YOU KNOW?

• George Thorogood and the Destroyers made unlikely bedfellows with Prince in 1981, when they were both on a bill in support of the Rolling Stones at LA Coliseum.
• Thorogood’s third album, 1979’s Better than the Rest, was actually a collection of demos recorded in 1974.
• Almost ten years after its original release, “Bad to the Bone” was given a tongue-in-cheek outing in the 1991 sci-fi action thriller Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
• The Destroyers have had a remarkably stable line-up in their forty-plus-year career, with drummer Jeff Simon and bassist Bill Blough still in the band after appearing on Thorogood’s debut album
• A huge baseball – and longtime Mets – fan, Thorogood had a brief spell as a semi-pro second baseman in the ’70s.

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Words: Jason Draper

Trent Reznor, the lead creative force behind Nine Inch Nails, has graced the Time 100 list of Most Influential People, been inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and been described by Spinas “the most vital artist in music."But before the international arena tours, Oscar wins, and millions of albums sold, he was just an assistant engineer and janitor at a smalltime Cleveland recording studio. It was there that Nine Inch Nails began with a collection of sample-heavy demos Reznor wrote, played and recorded largely by himself during studio downtime. Those songs became his studio debut, Pretty Hate Machine.

Recorded in 1988 and released in ’89, Pretty Hate Machineis a product of its time, borrowing from new wave acts like Depeche Mode and Gary Numan while also referencing ‘80s industrial forerunners like Ministry and Skinny Puppy. The way Reznor blended those elements with pop, rock, funk, dance and hip-hop, though, made his debut fresh and captivating. Funk-laden guitar-synth textures, tortured introspective lyrics, and a verse-chorus pop structure–still hallmarks of Nine Inch Nails’ sound–were all here in nascent form. And for all its nihilistic rage, Pretty Hate Machine didn’t scare off the masses: it hit No. 75 on the Billboard 200, eventually going triple platinum. Its debut single, “Down In It,” was a hard-to-pin-down track that combined hip hop, dance, pop, industrial rock, and even nursery rhymes. (It reached No. 16 on both the U.S. Dance and Alternative charts, a testament to the diverse genres Nine Inch Nails straddles). Angsty rock anthem “Head Like a Hole” followed three months later, and the album’s final single, dancefloor melter “Sin,” came over a year later in November 1991. Both follow-up singles performed similarly to “Down In It,” keeping Pretty Hate Machine on the Billboard 200 for a whopping 115 weeks.

By injecting the cold and abrasive sounds of industrial rock with relatable lyrics, gut-punch vocals, and addictive pop hooks and riffs, Reznor made the genre accessible to mainstream audiences. Or as David Bowie put it in a piece for Rolling Stone, Reznor’s music “contains a beauty that attracts and repels in equal measure: Nietzsche's 'God is dead' to a nightclubbing beat.” Along with the albums Broken and The Downward Spiral that followed it, Pretty Hate Machine kickstarted one of the most revolutionary sonic shifts in modern music history. Electronic/pop acts like LCD Soundsystem, Cold Cave, Grimes, Deadmau5 and the Knife followed in Nine Inch Nails’ footsteps, exploring ways to make synthetic sounds human, catchy and danceable. NIN’s influence can be heard across the spectrum of rock, too–from the alternative metal of Linkin Park to the art rock of St. Vincent. In the world of hip-hop, Kanye West (Yeezus particularly), Run the Jewels and Death Grips are just a few who come to mind as obviously indebted to Reznor.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine Turns 30 - Spin 

Spin commemorated Pretty Hate Machine’s 30^thanniversary by asking musicians inspired by Reznor, as well as those with unique insight into Nine Inch Nails’ brooding beginnings, to reflect on the album that started it all.”

📰 Reznor Hits College Radio On The Head - Keyboard

This April 1990 interview is a fascinating portrait of 25-year-old Reznor at the beginning of what would be a long and legendary musical career. It’s also interesting for its insight into his aesthetic choices as a producer. His genius for building soundscapes and bending samples into new sounds was already evident at this stage, though his skills would mature greatly over the years.

📰 Pretty Hate Machine (Reissue) Review - Pitchfork

A lifelong fan looks back on Nine Inch Nails’ landmark debut, reflecting on why the album retains immediacy and emotional heft so many years later.  

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Something I Can Never Have” - This was the first preview of Reznor’s gift for spellbinding minimalist balladry. He delivers a dejected tale of love lost over a repetitive piano figure that feels like the aural equivalent of poking a wound. The otherwise austere soundscape is embellished with harsh, scraping percussion, birdsong and metallic clangs.

“The Only Time” - Reznor is a huge Prince fan, and nowhere do you hear that more than on this funkified lover man jam. Billboard described it best when they called it “baby-making music for messed-up citizens of future dystopias.”

“Terrible Lie” -The orchestra hit has never sounded so ominous. It anchors a head-bopping beat, which Reznor’s layered vocals weave around, evolving from clenched-teeth mutter to defiant yowl and back again.

DID YOU KNOW?

• “Down In It” was not only the first single from Nine Inch Nails’ debut album, but also the first song Reznor ever wrote, period.
• Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk is a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails, and once called Pretty Hate Machine “the first honest piece of music I ever heard.”
• The cover art is said to reflect the album’s “ghost in the machine” aesthetic. On a Nine Inch Nails message board, Reznor explained it was “a photo of the blades of some sort of turbine stretched vertically so they would look somewhat like bones or a rib cage.”
• Reznor is a classically trained musician, but consciously rejected technique and theory for a more impulse-driven, raw sound.
• Chicago-based art collective H Gun. Corp, the same group behind Ministry’s “Stigmata” music video, created the visuals for “Head Like a Hole” and “Down In It.”

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Words: Katherine McCollough

Photo Credit: West Kennerly

As an artist, Jewel was destined to succeed her own terms. Having grown up in Alaska, without running water or heat (“we mainly lived off what we could kill or can,” she later recalled), she learned from a young age how to be self-sufficient. By the time she graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy, in Michigan, and drifted down to San Diego, the girl born Jewel Kilcher was pouring a lifetime’s worth of experience into her songwriting. As a fixture on the local coffee house scene she quickly gained a following, deftly capturing the intimacy of these shows on her debut album, Pieces Of You.

Partly recorded live at San Diego’s Inner Change Coffeehouse, and partly during sessions held at Neil Young’s own Broken Arrow Ranch, backed by Shakey’s Stary Gators band, Pieces Of You is so emotionally honest that listening to it is like reading a private diary. Jewel was still in her teens when she wrote songs like “You Were Meant For Me” and “Foolish Games,” and, over two decades since hitting No.2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and topping the Adult Contemporary charts, they continue to encapsulate the innocence – and intensity – of young love.

Much has been made of Jewel’s age at the time Pieces Of You was released, on February 28, 1995. Still only nineteen, she was wise beyond her years, playing and singing with a commitment – and confidence – few artists command in the formative stages of their career. Those songs captured at the Inner Change, like “Near You Always” and the album’s title track – show just what a connection she’d made with her audience before Pieces Of You was even complete. By the time she was invited to tour in support of Bob Dylan, in 1997, resulting in a major boost for both her profile and the record, Jewel was ready leap into a whole new stage of her career. Her growing fanbase was ready with open arms.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 Jewel: Still Shining - San Diego Magazine 

Twenty years after San Diego helped put her on the map, Jewel discusses those early days with the city’s most prominent lifestyle mag. “I started writing down all my worst fears and shameful secrets,” she reveals. “It saved my life.”

📰 Jewel Wants you to Be Present - New York Times

Jewel talks mindfulness–why it’s especially useful now, and how it’s influenced her music all the way back to Pieces of You.

📰 How Singer-Songwriter Jewel Turned Her Life Around - Fortune

Jewel discusses how she found herself homeless at the age of 15, the ways in which her core values have informed every stage of her career, and why vulnerability can be a saving grace. 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Pieces Of You” - Unrelentingly scathing, Pieces Of You’s title track finds Jewel tackling inhumane behavior in various guises. Bullies and bigots, racists and homophobes are all in the singer’s crosshairs as she levels a charge at those who project their self-hatred onto others. Complex themes delivered with youthful simplicity, the roots of much of Jewel’s later humanitarian work can be found here.

“Near You Always” - Just Jewel and a guitar on the Inner Change stage: the painful honesty of this appeal to an all-consuming love is about as heart-on-sleeve as things get. But what appears to be a plea from the depths of helplessness is, on closer listens, actually a validation of emotional honesty – vulnerability displayed as virtue for those scared of their own feelings.

“Daddy” - Even accounting for the fact that teenagers often have complicated relationships with their parents, “Daddy” is a startling examination of Jewel’s relationship with her father. Beginning with confessions of her own questionable behavior, the song turns into a coruscating attack on her father’s failure to live up to his responsibilities.

DID YOU KNOW?

• One of Jewel’s formative experiences as a performer was learning to yodel from her father, with whom she performed as a singing duo.
• She has had a parallel career as an actor, with notable appearances including Ang Lee’s 1999 Western, Ride The Devil, and starring as June Carter Cash in the 2013 TV movie Ring Of Fire.
• A dedicated philanthropist, Jewel has raised significant awareness and funding to help tackle homelessness, breast cancer and environmental issues.
• In 2015, Jewel told her life story in the critically acclaimed memoir Never Broken.
• Three years later, Cirque De Soleil adapted it for a stage show, in aid of the clean-water charity One Drop Foundation.

Listen to Pieces Of You in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below.  

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Words: Jason Draper

Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn

R.E.M. are recognized as pioneers of the alternative rock genre, influencing peers like Nirvana, Pavement, Wilco and countless others who followed in their wake. The Athens group is noted for Peter Buck’s chiming arpeggiated guitar style; Michael Stipe’s unique vocals and enigmatic lyrics; Mike Mills’ melodic basslines and Berry’s tight, understated drumming style. Over their remarkable 31-year-long career, R.E.M. released fifteen albums, toured internationally, won multiple GRAMMYs® and were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. It’s a wonder that a band as cerebral, stylistically adventurous and politically outspoken as R.E.M. achieved mainstream success–and sustained it for decades! It’s that unlikely magic that makes them a strong contender for America’s greatest band.

Released in 1992, Automatic for the People was the prolific rockers’ 8^thalbum and is widely considered to be the finest of their solid-across-the-board discography. By the time of Automatic’s release, R.E.M. had already made the climb from cult band to internationally successful act, but this was the album that solidified their status as the biggest, most important rock band in America (just ask Pitchfork, Variety or Rolling Stone). Stubbornly following their muse as always, the quartet released a baroque, strings-heavy collection of ruminations on mortality and loss completely out of step with the grunge era. It may not have been on-trend, but Automaticwas irresistibly tuneful and gorgeously melodic. It’s stunning to realize that “Everybody Hurts” “Man on the Moon” and “Nightswimming”–three iconic hits that remain in heavy radio rotation to this day–were allon this album. It also yielded the popular if slightly less ubiquitous singles “Drive,” “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” and “Find the River.” This reflective, mournful masterpiece is a no-skipper.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 How R.E.M. Invented Alternative Musicy by Salon 

Written immediately after R.E.M. announced they were disbanding, this piece examines the subtle alchemy that made the band almost mythologically great.

📰 R.E.M.: America's Greatest Band by The Atlantic

“What other U.S. group was as good for as long?” Nobody, that’s who.

📰 Automatic for the People (Review) by Pitchfork

This 9.3 review was written following the album’s 25^thanniversary reissue. It appraises the brooding, transitional album as still emotionally and politically resonant all these years later.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Try Not to Breathe” - As Stipe told Song Exploder, when he first heard the demo of this track, its repetitive, loping structure reminded him of the “heaving motion of a boat rocking on the ocean…also, it could feel very much like someone breathing, or trying to stop breathing.” He was inspired to write the song from the perspective of his beloved grandmother at the end of her life (“I have seen things you will never see/I want you to remember”). That morose lyrical content is accentuated by a pensive dulcimer riff and a call-and-response organ part. And we’d be remiss not to mention Mike Mills’ soaring backing vocals, which stick in your head long after you’ve heard them. Reflecting on the album decades later, he told Stereogum,“I felt like John Lennon when I came up with [that].”

“Monty Got a Raw Deal” - “Monty Got a Raw Deal” is an elegy for the troubled Fifties movie star Montgomery Clift. Stipe seems to see much of his own story in Clift’s, making it feel like a statement of self-acceptance when he offers the empathetic assurances “You don’t own me anything” and “Virtue isn’t everything/So don’t waste time.” Compositionally, the song is largely Buck’s, with a riff written on bouzouki (a mandolin-like Greek instrument).

“Find the River” - The album’s closer and final single isn’t an airplay staple like its sister ballad “Nightswimming,” but it’s just as much of a triumph. Both songs grapple, through the metaphor of water, with transience, mortality and bittersweet remembrance. Delicate, luminous harmonies augmented by spare instrumentation lend an understated eloquence to the proceedings.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The album’s ninth track is a lusty love ballad the band was planning to call “Fuck Me Kitten”…until they played it for Meg Ryan. She loved the song, but commented that it may get pulled from shelves in small, conservative towns because of the profane title. Thus, they changed the obscenity to “Star,” in reference to the asterisks used to censor curse words.
• The lyrics and vocal melodies for “Man on the Moon,” one of R.E.M.’s all-time greatest songs, didn’t come together until the very last day of recording. (It’s a pretty handy reference to whip out the next time you get criticized for procrastinating.)
• “Everybody Hurts” was released as a single in April 1993. Its Fellini-inspired music video was directed by Jake Scott, son of the legendary Blade Runner filmmaker Ridley. In the video, shot outside San Antonio, Stipe wanders through a massive interstate traffic jam, eventually inspiring his fellow road warriors to ditch their cars, too. The clip picked up four trophies at the MTV Video Music Awards and earned Stipe praise for his impressive acting chops.
• According to Mike Mills, he recorded his part for “Nightswimming” on the same piano that Derek and the Dominos used for the epic coda to “Layla.”
• The political rock epic “Ignoreland” was inspired by Neil Young. “The song is written in Neil Young’s tuning – not that he owns it,” Buck told Melody Maker in 1992.“But the Es are tuned down to D, like in ‘Cinnamon Girl.’ I admit it; he’s the one I learned that tuning from.”

Listen to Automatic For The People in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below.  

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Words: Katherine McCollough

By the time 26-year-old Brenton Wood released his debut album, Oogum Boogum, in 1967, he’d been skirting around the edges of the music business for the best part of a decade, singing with vocal groups like the Quotations and Little Freddy and the Rockets in the late ’50s before releasing a few singles under his own name (or, rather, his stage name; Wood was born Alfred Jesse Smith). Having taught himself piano by copping licks from other players, he also penned songs for other artists to record–figuring if he wasn’t going to find success as a singer himself, he could at least gain a foothold as a professional songwriter. As time went on, however, Wood found he was making more money as a mechanic than he was a musician, and he began to rethink his future.

That’s when Double Shot Records handed him a song called “Casting My Spell on You.” Not overly impressed, Wood rewrote it as “The Oogum Boogum Song,” namechecking ’60s fashions – “And you wear that cute mini skirt/With your brother’s sloppy shirt,” “When you wear your bell-bottom pants/I just stand there in a trance” – while working up a catchy nonsense hook and an earworm piano line. The reworked track scored him a Top 20 R&B hit and even cracked the Top 40. He quickly followed up on the runaway success of that single with a 30-minute collection of sun-kissed R&B titled Oogum Boogum.The album proved Wood, whose decade-plus experience gave him a laidback confidence in the studio, was no one-hit wonder.

Finding himself on bills with everyone from Motown legends The Temptations to countercultural icon Janis Joplin, Wood picked up an audience that included both lovers of soul music and a new breed of revolutionary youth. But while his second single, “Gimme Little Sign,” hit No. 9 on the Hot 100, indicating that longterm crossover success was within reach, the hits dried up as quickly as they’d started. Wood settled into the role of cult artist, tirelessly performing live shows for the faithful well into his 70s. Meanwhile “The Oogum Boogum Song” took on a life of its own through placements in movies and commercials, casting its spell on generations of new fans and proving that some styles never go out of fashion.

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 The Story Behind: Brenton Wood, "The Oogum Boogum Song" - REBEAT

A deeper look at how Brenton Wood rewrote “Casting My Spell On You,” giving it a fresh hook and scoring his first hit.

📰 Dick Clark American Bandstand Interview, 1967

With a number of stations about to broadcast that night’s football game, Wood has less than 40 seconds to explain why a planned Italian version of “Oogum Boogum” fell through. “What’s different about ‘oogum boogum’ in Italian than English?” “Complications.”

📰 Urban Melody TV Interview, 2013

Catching up with a septuagenarian Brenton chilling in his car after a show, Urban Melody TV founder Saul Maldonado discovers why the singer, whose family relocated to San Pedro, Los Angeles, when he was a child, has a large Latin-American following.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“I Think You've Got Your Fools Mixed Up” - Such was Wood’s confidence by the time he recorded his debut album, he chose to open Oogum Boogum with this ballad and tucked the hit single away at the end of side one on the original vinyl. A kiss-off to a former lover sung in a sweet high register trailed by acoustic guitar lines, it could be a message to those who’d written Wood off during his years of struggle: he wasn’t begging anymore. This was an artist finding success on his own terms.

“Runnin' Wild” - Whether true or not, this roll-call of misbehavior – “Drinkin’ hard liquor at the age of ten/Chasin’ wild women since I don’t know when/Rollin’ them dice at the age of 11” – sat knowingly on Wood’s shoulders. Over an infectious chugging riff, Wood realizes the error of his ways, warning future troublemakers to follow his advice, not his path: “If you’re headin’ for trouble, you better stop right now.” 

“Gimme Little Sign” - Released hot on the heels of “The Oogum Boogum Song,” “Gimme Little Sign” was the bigger hit, but has since been eclipsed in memory due to its predecessor’s use in pop culture. Legendary producer J Dilla remembered it, though, sampling the cut for “Signs,” which appeared on Donuts EP: J. Rocc’s Picks, the follow-up to Dilla’s epochal 2006 album Donuts.

“Psychotic Reaction” - Brenton Wood’s easygoing soul may seem at odds with Count Five’s bratty garage rock, but this cover of his labelmates’ most famous song shows why he managed to appeal to soul heads and hippies alike. Effectively jumping on the group’s original backing track with organ overdubs, Wood turns a ’60s nugget into an R&B jam by sheer dint of his voice.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The phrase “oogum boogum” was Brenton Wood’s equivalent of “abracadabra.”
• Big Star mastermind Alex Chilton covered “The Oogum Boogum Song.”  
• Wood himself re-recorded “Gimme Little Sign” in 2014 with the Americana duo William Pilgrim & the All Grows Up.
• Despite being called “Gimme Little Sign,” Wood actually sings “Just gimme some kinda sign” in the chorus.
• His lesser-known 1972 funk cut “Sticky Boom Boom Too Cold” was co-written with Earth, Wind & Fire guitarist Al McKay and co-produced by cult Trinidadian-American funkster George Semper. 

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Words: Jason Draper

The pioneering Canadian Cree musician and social activist Buffy Sainte-Marie first gained prominence as part of Greenwich Village’s early- to mid-’60s folk scene alongside Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. Folk music traditionally contains populist social critiques, but even by those standards, Buffy was radical: she wrote about drug addiction (“Co’dine”), imperialist propaganda (“My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying”) and the genocidal violence of settler colonialism (“Now That the Buffalo’s Gone,” among many others). Although the daring and incendiary folk singer never became a household name like some of her contemporaries–likely due to persistent anti-Native racism and government-directed blacklisting–her impact reverberated throughout popular music. Donovan and Glen Campbell both landed on the charts with covers of her iconic antiwar rallying cry “Universal Soldier;” Janis Joplin created shockwaves with her take on “Co’dine”; and Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand and the Monkees were among many notable artists who covered “Until It’s Time for You to Go.”

In 1969, Buffy continued her career-long tradition of trailblazing with Illuminations. It was the first-ever album with vocals processed through a Buchla 100 synthesizer as well as the first recorded using quadraphonic technology, an early precursor to surround-sound. With the exception of a lead guitar on one track and a rhythm section employed on three of the last four selections, the music is entirely synthesized from Buffy’s voice and guitar, producing a wholly unique sound that incorporates folk, rock, pop, European avant-garde, gothic and indigenous styles. A commercial failure at the time, derided for straying from her usual folk sound, Illuminations is now recognized as a pivotal entry in the history of electronic music. Critics have cited its disorienting, spectral soundscapes as a forerunner of gothic music as well as an influence on the later freak folk movement (Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart, etc.). The album is best remembered for its opening track, “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot,” an incantatory, extemporized musical setting of a Leonard Cohen poem. Although virtually every sound on the album was electronically processed in some way, this song receives one of the most extreme treatments, with Buffy’s voice so fragmented by distortion that she sounds like an elemental force. Album closer “Poppies,” perfectly described by AllMusic as “the most tripped-out, operatic, druggily beautiful medieval ballad ever psychedelically sung,” has also become a cult classic.

RECOMMENDED READING

📰 Pitchfork’s 9.0 Review

Pitchfork revisits Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “cosmic, groundbreaking 1969 album, an ecstatic invocation of pain, pleasure, and divinity.”

📰 Sainte-Marie on Her New Album and Legacy as a Native American Activist by Vogue

Buffy looks back at her long career as an artist and activist in this fascinating candid interview.

📰 Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on Illuminations by MusicWorks

Buffy shares little-known information about the making of Illuminations.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Adam" - Buffy’s throws her quivering voice all over the mix on this propulsive, slow-burning Richie Havens cover accented by an eerie, electronically distorted bassline. She imbues the tale of Adam's fall with all the chilling, wondrous mystery it deserves. 

“The Angel” - One of many songs on the album to invoke Biblical imagery, Buffy’s mesmerizing cover of the Ed Freeman ballad mimics a soul’s ascension to Heaven. High, trilling vocals soar over swelling strings, and towards the end, a ghostly chorus can be heard faintly singing over tinkling bells. It’s haunting and deeply tender at the same time.

“He's a Keeper Of The Fire” - This blazing groove is the album’s most raucous cut as well as one of the most overtly sensual songs Buffy ever recorded–she even howls at the moon! Banshees wail in the background as Buffy belts out a passionate tribute to a lover who’s “got a heavy kinda hoodoo, baby.” Fans of this song include Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, who selected it for his MOJO Magazine compilation, Well… All Right! A 15-Track Musical Journey.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Starting in the mid-Seventies, Buffy spent five years as a recurring cast member of Sesame Street, where she became the first person to breastfeed on national television.  
• Buffy taught herself to play piano at age three and began setting her poems to music at the age of four.
• At 16, she taught herself guitar and ultimately invented 32 different ways of tuning her instrument, creating sounds completely unique to her music. 
• In 1982, Buffy became the first indigenous person to win an Oscar. Her song "Up Where We Belong," co-written for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won both the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. 
• Buffy helped Joni Mitchell get her big break, playing Joni’s tape for talent scout Elliot Roberts, who became Joni's manager. (Roberts went on to become a legend in the music industry, managing Neil Young, Bob Dylan and the Cars, among other megastars.) 

Listen to Illuminations in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below. 

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Words: Katherine McCollough

Before the anarchic social satire and the infamous “Fish Cheer” (reimagined with an entirely different four-letter word at Woodstock), and before San Francisco’s countercultural scene truly found itself, Country Joe & The Fish’s debut album crystallized everything the burgeoning West Coast scene had to offer in May 1967. At a time when contemporaries like Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were still evolving from their folk-rock roots, Joe and co had a vision – and it might not have been entirely narcotics-free. Electric Music For The Mind And Bodyset its stall out in the title: Get ready, synapses. This’ll jump-start your induction into the psychedelic 60s.

As calling cards go, it doesn’t get much better than the opening track, “Flying High” road trips equate with mind trips soundtracked by Barry Melton’s fragmented guitar lines, which somehow bolster a solid groove while taking a crooked route through Joe’s tale of thumbing a ride to the airport. “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,” meanwhile, is a blues lament in spirit, David Cohen’s organ stabs stalking the song as if seeking to gobble all the psychotropics at the top of its heroine’s bookshelf.

Insouciant to the point of seeming utterly unbothered by success, Country Joe & The Fish were far more switched on than dropped out. While contemporaries like Moby Grape always sounded on the verge of collapse, The Fish’s inherent gift for songwriting ensured that their catchy hooks and wry lyrics bound everything together, finding an audience whose lives their music reflected in song. As far as psychedelic rock goes, some would push it further while others would burn themselves out with its sonic possibilities. But none would so acutely capture the countercultural way of life as Country Joe & The Fish did with Electric Music For The Mind And Body.

RECOMMENDED READING

📰 Country Joe McDonald Interview – Aquarium Drunkard

Country Joe talks about writing songs for Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, being “too radical for San Francisco,” and how the crowd-pleasing “Fish Cheer” became the infamous “Fuck Cheer.” 

📰 50 Essential Albums of 1967 – Rolling Stone

David Fricke and Robert Christgau give their run down of the most important and influential albums released in this year, “records that define the power, joy and legacy of 1967.” From Country Joe and the Fish, to The Doors, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, and beyond.

📰  1960s Rebels: Country Joe McDonald – V&A Museum

Joe McDonald speaks to London’s prestigious V&A museum about his iconic Woodstock solo performance, and why “all those grunge rockers and rappers” owe him “a little royalty” for bringing swearing into the mainstream.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Love” - A fake false start nods to the group’s anarchic sense of humor; Joe’s vocals strain at the thought of just how much love he’s struggling to contain (and is that a deliberate nod to then girlfriend Janis Joplin in the singing style?). It’s a short, bluesy track that fades out far too quickly, but then The Fish were never ones to outstay their welcome. Still, we’d kill for more of the shard-like guitar that Barry Melton throws out at the end.

“Bass Strings” - Haunting organ, echoey guitar fills like interlopers from another dimension, and Joe McDonald’s fragile falsetto: “Bass Strings” is the comedown – if, indeed, you can ever come down. Wash your mind in the sea, dry out in the desert… do anything you need to, but the eerily whispered closing refrain – “L.S.D. L.S.D. L.S.D.” – leaves a disconcerting sense that this won’t be easy…

“Super Bird” - Though a far more political group than Electric Music For The Mind And Bodymade it seem, this sneering comment on Lyndon B Johnson – under whose presidency the Vietnam War still raged – was a superhero theme tune turned countercultural rave-up. “Yeah, gonna make him eat flowers/Yeah, make him drop acid.” Better than bombs, that’s for sure.

“Grace” - Arguably the most sonically ambitious moment on the album, we find McDonald’s vocals switching between speakers (in the stereo mix, at least), wrapped in a soundscape woven from wind chimes, plaintive guitar, and tempestuous percussion. Written in tribute to Jefferson Airplane’s fearless frontwoman, Grace Slick, “Grace” closes the album on a fittingly ethereal note.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The band initially thought to call themselves Country Mao And The Fish…
• … But decided that a reference to Russian dictator Joseph Stalin would be better.
• The band’s most famous song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag,” was originally written for Electric Music For The Mind And Body, but held over for its follow-up, I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die.
• The group appeared as The Crackers in Zacharia, a 1971 movie billed as “the first electric western,” also staring a young Don Johnson.  
• The “Fuck Cheer” was so controversial that The Fish’s Ed Sullivan Show appearance was cancelled; the group were allowed to keep the fee they’d already been paid, so long as they agreed to never perform on the show.

Listen to Electric Music For The Mind And Body in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below. 

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Words: Jason Draper

Across four decades, from the 1940s through the 1970s, Bernard Herrmann helped elevate the movie soundtrack to the status of high art. Though, in his early career, he worked with visionary director Orson Welles, and would go on to score iconic movies by Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese, the New York-born composer will forever remain associated with Alfred Hitchcock – not least for his soundtrack to Vertigo, the 1958 masterpiece that arguably found the composer and director at their most sympatico.

The movie follows retired policeman John “Scottie” Ferguson as he sets off on the trail of Madeleine Elster, the wife of a former colleague. Seemingly possessed by the spirit of her great-grandmother, Madeleine’s erratic behaviour leads to her suicide… Or does it? A tale of obsessive love, Vertigo inspired one of Herrmann’s finest scores, its main theme perfectly encapsulating Ferguson’s descent into madness: seemingly endless cyclical motifs folding in on themselves; dramatic horn arrangements veering from startling interjections to foreboding and dread; a slow slide into the darker corners of the mind. It effectively induces vertigo itself.

Throughout Herrmann’s score, short, repetitive motifs needle the psyche with each return, but are woven into a frequently beautiful wider melodic framework. There are also nods to another tale of obsessive love, Wagner’s 19th-century opera Tristan Und Isolde, along with tender passages that not only remind you of Ferguson’s genuine romantic yearning, but underscore the tragedy to come.

A musicians’ strike in Los Angeles meant that Herrmann himself was unable to conduct the Vertigo recording sessions, which ended up being held in Vienna and London, under the supervision of Scottish composer Muir Mathieson. A severely abridged Vertigo soundtrack album was released alongside the movie, in 1958, but it wasn’t until almost four decades later, in 1996, that the original master tapes were found at Paramount Pictures. Some cues had been damaged over time, but a remastered Vertigo soundtrack offered the most comprehensive release of what remains arguably Herrmann’s masterpiece – a score that, in the words of esteemed music critic Alex Ross, not only “vastly enriches the images it accompanies,” but which has “also found a life outside the film.”

RECOMMENDED READING

📰  An Interview With Mrs Norma Herrmann, Wife Of Bernard Herrmann, And Good Friend Howard Blake OBE… – Spitfire Audio

The late composer’s widow and English composer Howard Blake discuss Herrmann’s pioneering use of the Moog synthesizer, his approach to creating soundtracks, and his less-known romantic side.

📰 An Interview With Bernard Herrmann - BernardHerrmann.org

Conducted in 1975, the year of his death, Herrmann discusses battling with directors, falling out with Hitchcock, and why, when a composer scores a movie, “he gives it life.”

📰  The Music That Casts The Spell Of Vertigo - The New York Times

Following the discovery of the original master tapes in 1996, Alex Ross explores the ways in which Herrmann’s score helped Hitchcock’s masterpiece become “a symphony for film and orchestra.”

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Carlotta's Portrait" - While the Vertigo score never dives wholesale into film noir, moments like this skulk around its edges. The shortest cue in the movie, “Carlotta’s Portrait" alerts us to an uncanny connection between Madeleine and her great-grandmother.

“Farewell And The Tower” - Herrmann rewards Ferguson and Madeleine’s romance with some of the most beautiful music in the film – for a moment. It’s not long before a sense of unease begins to encroach upon the lovers’ bliss. Even the moments that should soar are somewhat dizzying – rising, rising, rising, until Ferguson, frozen by vertigo, watches Madeleine leap to hear death. Herrmann’s masterful shifts in tone create a sonic narrative that ensures the cue’s success as a standalone piece of music.

“The Nightmare And Dawn” - After a short, almost innocuous introductory passage, jittery strings crawl in like an infestation of the mind. Variations on the same three-note motif are passed from instrument to instrument, destabilizing the center before, at the 1.34 mark, the arrangement seems to chase itself into a frenzy. Nightmare over, a gong crash signals the dawn – uneasy at first, before the strings offer a brief flash of romance that’s reflected – and inverted – in the following cue, the mournful “The Past And The Girl.”

“Scene D'Amour” - The slow swells and tentative progression should signal a love scene, but, by now, Ferguson is utterly deranged, having remade his new love, Judy, in Madeleine’s image. The soaring arrangement that comes in at 3.06 is not an aria for the meeting of souls, but a lament for the alternate reality that Ferguson has constructed – and which will ultimately lead to his unraveling.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Vertigo was Bernard Herrmann’s fourth collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock.
• His first movie score was for Orson Welles’ groundbreaking cinematic debut, Citizen Kane.
• The video for Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” opens with a snippet of Herrmann’s Vertigo prelude.
• Herrmann’s score for The Day The Earth Stood Still became one of the first soundtracks to feature electronic instruments.
• The composer died on Christmas Eve, 1975, the night that he finished his final score, for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.

Listen to Vertigo in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below. 

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Words: Jason Draper

A must-listen for any serious student of American popular music, Hot Buttered Soul radically expanded the borders of soul and funk and was instrumental in the creation of later styles such as disco and hip-hop. But a lot of things had to go very wrong for Isaac Hayes’ seminal sophomore album to exist.

First, in December 1967, Stax Records’ biggest star, Otis Redding, as well as all but two members of their best session group, the Bar-Kays, were killed in a plane crash. A few months later, the soul label was dealt another crushing blow when they broke with Atlantic Records and discovered that a contract clause gave Atlantic the right to continue to distribute their entire back catalog. Stax also lost their second-most popular act, Sam & Dave, in the split. In the wake of this profound tragedy and misfortune, Stax VP Al Bell took a desperate gamble: He scheduled the immediate release of 27 albums and 30 singles, plus ordered all Stax artists to record new material. In-house producer and songwriter, Isaac Hayes, was urged to record an album too.  

Hayes had recorded a debut for Stax in 1967, but it was unsuccessful commercially and frustrating creatively–recorded at an impromptu session he felt didn’t capture him at his best. For his second effort, Hayes insisted on retaining complete creative control. That freedom shows in the audacious choices he made: its four tracks span over 45 minutes, nearly half of that devoted to a slow-building, monologue-heavy rework of the country hit “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” The album brilliantly combined lounge music; the strings-drenched Philly soul sound; touches of tripped-out psychedelia and acid rock; jazz flourishes and overtly sensual, deep bass vocals. The result–funkier than Memphis soul and far more baroque than Motown–accidentally set the world on fire. Radio edits of “Walk on By” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” hit the Top 40, and the album went triple-Platinum, selling more than a million copies. Surprising everyone, Hot Buttered Soul turned Isaac Hayes into an icon and put Stax back on the map. Soul music would never be the same.

Hayes’ improbably successful maximalist masterpiece liberated commercial black artists from the singles-driven model of music making, inspiring a revolution of ambitious, album-oriented releases from artists like Curtis Mayfield, George Clinton, the Isley Brothers, Labelle and more. His raw, emotive baritone and symphonic soul/R&B style launched the “love man” genre that would explode in popularity during the ‘70s: the roots of Barry White’s indulgent bedroom soul and Marvin Gaye’s languid, jazz-inflected funk groove can be traced back to Hot Buttered Soul. In the mid-‘70s, black DJs partly inspired by the musical monologues of Isaac Hayes and his disciples created rap music. And another two decades down the line, pretty much every major hip-hop star sampled Hayes’ grandiose instrumentation, including Tupac, Dr. Dre and Biggie Smalls. Younger fans today often associate Hayes’ hot buttered voice with his character “Chef” on the popular animated TV series South Park, and those around during his heyday remember him best for his Shaft soundtrack, but Hot Buttered Soul, too, is an indispensable piece of Hayes’ legacy. 

RECOMMENDED READING

📰  How Isaac Hayes Changed Soul Music by the New Yorker 

Explains how Hot Buttered Soul’s sonic largesse represented not only a musical revolution, but a political one. 

📰 Hot Buttered Soul (Review) by Pitchfork

“If it weren't for the New York Mets, Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul would be the most unlikely comeback story of 1969,” Nate Patrin cracks in this rave review.

📰  The Story of Isaac Hayes: The Spirit of Memphis by WhoSampled

WhoSampled’s Hayes feature will give you a better sense of the enormous scope of his influence. Did you know, for instance, that he is one of the top 20 most sampled artists of all time? Read to understand his contributions more deeply. 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Walk on By” - The album’s opening track is an epic 12-minute cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal Dav’id classic. It kicks things into high drama right away, with a thumping mid-tempo drumbeat, celestial organ and strings, and a funky bassline that give way to a (much-sampled) fuzz guitar riff. It’s over two minutes into the song before we hear Isaac Hayes’ voice, but we’ve been through the ringer already. Hayes' interplay with his trio of background singers (credited as “Hot,” “Buttered” and “Soul”) ups the intensity of the song’s pathos even further. Around nine minutes in, a kaleidoscopic, warbling guitar riff transitions the song into a frenzied organ and guitar coda that reaches unbelievable heights before finally releasing you after three minutes of madness.

“Hyperbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic” - Hayes’ sole songwriting credit on Hot Buttered Soul is straight-ahead, slick funk that gradually evolves into something approaching krautrock. His humorous pidgin Latin lyrics are accented by a stomping piano riff, wah-wah guitar and the breathy vocals of his background singers.

“One Woman” - This twinkling cover of Charles Chalmers' and Sandra Rhodes' mellow ballad serves as a breather before the majestically sprawling album closer. It also proves Hayes could still have an emotional impact in a more conventional, short-format composition–this one clocks in at just five minutes.

“By the Time I Get to Phoenix” - So legend has it, Isaac Hayes incorporated “raps” (monologues that blended speaking and singing) to hook the attention of apathetic bar audiences. For the first eight and a half minutes of this 18-minute opus, he murmurs over a hypnotic minimalist groove explaining what drove the song’s protagonist to hit the road. By the end, the song is exploding with triumphant brass fanfare and sweet strings, a conclusion that feels all the more euphoric for the journey you’ve taken to arrive there. Hayes once explained his formula to NPR’s Audie Cornish, “You can't put bread in a cold oven . . . You've got to heat it up. So that's what I like to do with my music. I like to build it, and build it into a maddening, exciting crescendo.” 

DID YOU KNOW?

• In 1972 Hayes won an Oscar for Best Original Song for his “Theme From Shaft,” becoming the first black composer to receive that honor. He also won two Grammys for his Shaft soundtrack.
• Hayes was raised by his sharecropper grandparents in segregated rural Tennessee.
• At Stax, Isaac Hayes worked with fellow songwriter David Porter to create some of the Sixties' most groundbreaking soul music, including such Sam & Dave hits as “Soul Man” “I Thank You” and “Hold On, I’m Comin.’”  
• Hayes put in session work on virtually all of Otis Redding’s recordings. 

Listen to Hot Buttered Soul in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below. 

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Words: Katherine McCollough

Released on July 16, 1970, Cosmo’s Factory remarkably stood as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s fifth full-length in two years. The San Francisco Bay-bred swamp rockers were at the peak of a prolific streak, having released an unbelievable three Billboard Top Ten albums the year prior (outselling even the Beatles!) Even the album title–named after drummer Doug “Cosmo” Clifford’s nickname for the band’s practice space– nods to the group’s machine-like efficiency at pumping out hits. With Cosmo’s Factory, Creedence topped the album chart in the US for the second time, while they scored their first No. 1 in the UK, Canada and Australia, among other territories, firmly cementing their status as international rock stars. 

Though they emerged in a place and time where trippy, psychedelic visions were the order of the day, CCR bucked contemporary trends and instead tapped into a rich, traditional seam of American music that connected to blues, country, rockabilly, gospel, folk and R&B. On Cosmo’s Factory in particular, the band experiments with a diverse, Americana-rooted sonic palette: There’s the folk-tinged “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” blues rocker “Run Through the Jungle,” the seven-minute-long psychedelic jam “Ramble Tamble,” a rockabilly rendition of “Ooby Dooby” and the twangy shuffle “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” a nod to the “Bakersfield Sound” of West Coast country artists like Buck Owens. They even paid tribute to the Detroit soul sound, transforming Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” into a spirited, 11-minute-long jam.  

Successful as it was at the time of its release, Cosmo’s Factory  has only grown in stature and commercial viability throughout the years. It eventually sold over four million copies, and track-listing-wise, it appears to be a greatest hits collection — “Who”ll Stop the Rain,” “Run Through the Jungle,” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” have all became staples of the Great American Songbook, as emblematic of American culture as baseball or apple pie. “Long as I Can See the Light,” “Travelin’ Band” and “Up Around the Bend,” too, were Top Ten hits that remain popular to this day. After two more years and two more albums, Creedence Clearwater Revival would disband, but their legacy remains towering. Cosmo’s Factory – widely considered to be their finest album–has a lot to do with that. 

RECOMMENDED READING

📰 Cosmo's Factory review - Rolling Stone

It’s fascinating to read how Cosmo’s Factory was received at the time of its original release and compare that to the legendary stature they’ve attained since. The critic’s praise now comes across amusingly understated, e.g. “‘Lookin’ Out My Back Door' . . . is good car music, great for summer and will probably be commercially successful.” 

📰 Cosmo's Factory feature - This Day In Music

A track-by-track exploration that provides extensive historical context for those who weren’t lucky enough to be around in Creedence’s heyday (or for nostalgic longtime fans looking to take a trip down memory lane). 

📰 The Spirit of Ramble Tamble - Pitchfork

In which reviews editor Jeremy D. Larson makes the argument that Creedence’s lesser-known jam “Ramble Tamble” has–consciously or not–influenced some of the best moments in indie rock. (More on this underappreciated gem below.) 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

"Ramble Tamble" - The sprawling album opener, marks a daring group willing to buck expectations despite their popularity as a singles band. This seven-minute rocker starts in a style reminiscent of the early Sun Records sessions CCR often mined for inspiration. Then, around the two-minute mark, it downshifts into a more leisurely midtempo, building to a gloriously spastic psych-rock guitar breakdown that lasts another two and a half minutes before reprising the introductory section. One of the best opening tracks in the history of rock. 

"Travelin’ Band" - This song was the lead single off Cosmo’s Factory, but is less remembered today than cuts like “Run Through the Jungle” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” Still, this is an enormously fun, breakneck rocker with a blaring horn section, a rollicking bassline and a very respectable imitation of Little Richard’s vocal stylings. Three tracks in, it demonstrates how Creedence’s sonic palette was broadening as they solidified their swamp rock sound – John even plays sax on this track. 

"My Baby Left Me" - It was originally by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, a Delta blues musician prominent in the 1940s. It gained further exposure thanks to covers, including an Elvis Presley hit B-side from 1956–another Sun Records cut, and the version Creedence’s rockabilly rendition clearly references. At a 2012 performance, John even went so far as to assert, "This record may be the reason that I play guitar.” 

DID YOU KNOW?

• Cosmo’s Factory is the band’s bestselling LP besides the essential 1976 greatest hits compilation Chronicle. 
• John Fogerty experimented with playing new instruments on Cosmo’s Factory, like saxophone, piano and dobro (a type of resonator acoustic guitar popular in blues music). 
• “Run Through the Jungle” was Tom Fogerty’s all-time favorite CCR recording: ‘It’s like a little movie in itself with all the sound effects. It never changes key, but it holds your interest the whole time. It’s like a musician’s dream. It never changes key, yet you get the illusion it does.’ 
• Early pressings of the album contain a 3-second dropout on the left stereo channel during "Before You Accuse Me" and an earlier mix of "Travelin' Band" with John Fogerty's first solo mixed behind the horn section. 
• The final verse of “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” with its references to music, large crowds, rain and crowds trying to keep warm, was inspired by the band’s experience at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. 

Listen to Cosmo’s Factory in its entirety on your preferred streaming platform or purchase on wax below.   

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Words: Katherine McCollough 

Though Big Star failed to strike commercial success initially, their 1972 debut, #1 Record, is now widely hailed as a rock ‘n’ roll milestone. Heavily influenced by the British Invasion yet markedly original, Big Star offered a distinctly new sound characterized by driving, jangly guitars; sweet, anthemic harmonies and innocently melancholic lyrics. It came to be known as “power pop,” a genre that wouldn’t truly take off until later in the decade. Nevertheless, Big Star became an underground favorite, influencing some the biggest alt-rock artists of the ’80s, ’90s and beyond, including R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Wilco, and the Replacements (who famously penned the song “Alex Chilton” as an ode to Big Star’s frontman). 

The Memphis band was formed in 1971 by singer-songwriters Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, drummer Jody Stephens and bassist Andy Hummel. Chilton and Bell drew on the Lennon/McCartney style of collaborative songwriting for #1 Record. Working with Ardent Records’ founder and engineer, John Fry, Chilton laid down guitar and vocal tracks, often in one take, while Bell added polish with overdubs and harmonies on songs like “The Ballad of El Goodo,” “Thirteen,” and “In the Street.” #1 Record was released to wide critical acclaim–Billboard even went so far as to say "Every cut could be a single”–but ineffective marketing and distribution issues thwarted their success. At the time of its initial release, #1 Record sold fewer than 10,000 units. 

Big Star disbanded in late 1978 after two more underperforming albums, Radio City and Third. (These, too, were masterpieces.) They could have easily fallen into the abyss of could-have-beens and one-hit-wonders, but have instead become, in the words of Rolling Stone, "one of the most mythic and influential cult acts in all of rock & roll.” Singles “When My Baby’s Beside Me” and “In the Street” have become cultural touchstones, alongside “The Ballad of El Goodo” and “Thirteen.”  

Big Star’s influence permeates even today, and countless artists–Elliott Smith, the Bangles, Placebo, Beck, and Jeff Buckley, to name a few–have covered their songs.  

RECOMMENDED READING 

📰 #1 Record / Radio City review - Rolling Stone

Bud Scoppa’s gushing February 1973 review shows just how successful Big Star might have been during their heyday if only their releases were marketed and distributed effectively. 

📰 Don't Lie to Me: An Oral History of Big Star - Consequence of Sound

Argues that history and hindsight point to Big Star as the band that provided the blueprint for ’70s power pop, ’80s college alternative, ’90s indie folk, and today’s retro hybridization of it all. 

📰 We Talk to R.E.M.'s Mike Mills About Big Star's Enduring Legacy. - Noisey

R.E.M. bassist and songwriter Mike Mills on his lifelong love affair with the cult band. 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“The India Song” - Lead singer-guitarist Alex Chilton and singer-guitarist Chris Bell were the primary songwriters for Big Star, but it was bassist Andy Hummel who penned “The India Song.” It’s a quasi-psychedelic mid-tempo piece with wonderfully balanced harmony vocals (courtesy the band’s producer, Terry Manning), a flute-like mellotron riff, a sleigh bell sweetly keeping time and sunny acoustic guitar.  

 “My Life Is Right” - One of the most joyful moments on the album, this Abbey Road-esque rocker is anchored by drummer Jody Stephens’ bubbling triplet fills. You can’t help but smile as an ecstatic Bell proclaims, “You give me light/you are my day.” 

“Give Me Another Chance” - This heartbreaking acoustic ballad emphasizes the songwriting talents of Bell and Chilton as a duo, you can hear Bell’s British Invasion influences meld with Chilton’s proclivity for blue-eyed soul and R&B. Chilton’s weary, regret-soaked croon is complemented beautifully by soaring organs and a wall of sweet backing vocals. One of the strongest of many strong moments on the album’s B-side.  

DID YOU KNOW?

• The band was standing outside Ardent Studios taking a break from a recording session one evening when they were struck by inspiration in the form of a Memphis grocery chain across the street. Its sign bore a big red star as a logo–hence the name Big Star.  
• Before joining Big Star at 16, Alex Chilton had experienced some major success as the front man of blue-eyed soul group the Box Tops (known for hits "The Letter", "Cry Like a Baby" and "Soul Deep.") 
• The lyric "rock 'n' roll is here to stay" from “Thirteen” allegedly refers to the Beatles’ 1964 debut U.S. tour, which Chilton and Bell both attended at age 13. 
• While recording at Ardent Studios with R.E.M. in the 80’s, Mike Mills met and befriended Jody Stephens. When Stephens became the only surviving member of the band after Alex Chilton passed in 2010, he invited Mills to join an all-star tribute band, called Big Star’s Third after their third album. 

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Words: Katherine McCollough 

With grunge hitting like a tidal wave in the early 90s – you know the roll call: Nevermind, Badmotorfinger, Ten – all eyes were on Seattle for the next nation-engulfing hit. If they’d just looked a bit further down, they’d have seen it happening right under their noses, in Atlanta, Georgia. But the joke is: when Collective Soul released their debut single, “Shine,” in March 1993, they weren’t even really a band. The songs that made up their debut album, Hints Allegations And Things Left Unsaid, were demos; all frontman Ed Roland wanted was a publishing deal as a songwriter. After college radio put “Shine” on heavy rotation, however, those demos were released as a full-blown album, issued by the local indie imprint Rising Storm, and Roland had to reconvene the group so they could make live appearances.

The New York Times called Collective Soul “Southern grunge” – a handy label at the time, but there’s a key word in their name: soul. If you’re recording in James Brown’s home state, you can’t avoid it. It’s there in the gentle organ that underpins the album’s third single, “Wasting Time;” you’ll catch it in Ed Roland’s impassioned, at times gospel-tinged vocals; feel it in “Shine”’s lyrics, described by Roland’s brother (and bandmate), Dean, as “a prayer.” If it’s not straight-up soul music, Hints Allegations And Things Left Unsaid is downright full of soul. And, to some, it was an antidote to the nihilism of grunge. What other band would be confident enough in themselves to include a two-minute orchestral interlude (“Pretty Donna”) midway through a demo recording?

As “Shine” headed to the top of Billboard’s “Album Rock Tracks” chart for eight weeks, on its way to becoming one of VH1’s “100 Greatest Songs Of The 90s,” the album was reissued by major label Atlantic Records. “We thought it would be great to sell 10-20,000 units,” Roland later recalled. When their debut album went gold, for sales of over 500,000, the group “were sitting there with our eyes wide open.” Going far beyond anyone’s expectations, Hints Allegations And Things Left Unsaid ensured Collective Soul were one of the most talked-about alt-rock bands of the year.

RECOMMENDED READING & LISTENING  

📰 Pop; Neo-60s From Georgia - The New York Times

The live review that coined the term “Southern grunge.” Ed Roland seems surprised at the band’s swift rise to fame; writer John Parales also draws comparisons with The Allman Brothers Band and Counting Crows.

📰 Songwriter Interviews: Ed Roland - Songfacts

Ed Roland discusses writing some of Collective Soul’s most enduring songs, including “Shine,” and why recording with a youth orchestra led to their best video.

📰 Collective Soul's Ed Roland Talks.. - Stereogum

More insights into “Shine,” and how, on tour, Collective Soul bring new meaning to classic songs, night after night.

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Wasting Time” - Isolate that opening organ and slow it down – you’ll hear a debt to Percy Sledge’s Southern soul classic “When A Man Loves A Woman.” When “Wasting Time” shifts gear, however, it blossoms into a 60s pop-tinged anthem whose upbeat arrangement belies the darker kiss-off behind its lyrics. Released as a single in April 1994, “Wasting Time” didn’t follow its predecessors, “Shine” and “Breathe,” into the charts, but it remains the hit that should have been.

“Heaven’s Already Here” - Collective Soul were sometimes given the “Christian rock” tag. While Ed Roland’s father was a Baptist minister, the band have always bristled at that perception. “We’re five individual guys with five individual beliefs,” he told PopMatters. “We all believe in a higher being, but we’re not out to profess what it is.” With its acoustic guitars and down-home vocal harmonies, the breezy “Heaven’s Already Here” is a love letter to contentedness that suggests Collective Soul were always as much alt-country as they were alt-rock.

“Goodnight, Good Guy” - Its muscular opening riff suggests a far angrier song, but “Goodnight, Good Guy” finds Ed Roland in a reflective mood. The religious imagery would have fuelled the Christian rock stereotype, but the song’s message is universal: there are considered ways of letting problems be, without exacerbating the issues.

“Breathe” - With its churchy organ and sinewy guitar, “Breathe” was the sort of song that emanated naturally from the South. Nestling just outside of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Top 10, it also offered something of an early 90s take on The Youngbloods’ classic hippie call for unity, “Get Together.”

DID YOU KNOW?

1. Country legend Dolly Parton covered “Shine” for her 2001 album, Little Sparrow, nabbing herself a GRAMMY for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in the process.
2. The title of Hints Allegations And Things Left Unsaid nods to Paul Simon’s 1986 hit single “You Can Call Me Al,” which includes the lyrics “There were incidents and accidents/There were hints and allegations.”
3. Collective Soul took their name from Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel, The Fountainhead.
4. “Shine” was actually written in 1989, four years before it was released. Based on a riff that Ed Roland had been sitting on, he completed the song with his brother, Dean.
5. The Hints Allegations And Things Left Unsaid album cover is based on a drawing used for the original 1979 Broadway production of Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. Instead of a bloody razor, the figure holds a banner proclaiming the band’s name and the album’s title.

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Words: Jason Draper

Count Five blended British Invasion influences with elements of the more local San Francisco Sound to create something energetic, aggressive and exciting that became the mainstream world’s first taste of psychedelic rock. The San Jose, California-based quintet were still teenagers when their Yardbirds-evoking hit “Psychotic Reaction” reached the US Top 5 in 1966, the very first psychedelic rock song to achieve that feat. After shooting up the charts, the band hurriedly recorded an entire album bearing the same name as their smash single– writing songs literally up until the last minute, as they flew to the studio in Los Angeles. The group went on to share stages with megastars from the Beach Boys to the Temptations to the Doors. They also played on both of Dick Clark’s TV showcases, “Where the Action Is” and “American Bandstand,” before disbanding just three years after their whirlwind success began. 

Although Count Five never recorded another album, they managed to leave their mark on pop culture indelibly: Their formula of replacing melodic electric guitar with howling feedback and distortion came to define psychedelic rock’s sound. “Psychotic Reaction” was selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” and was also immortalized in a surreal 1971 essay by rock critic Lester Bangs entitled “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung.” With his typical zany brilliance, Bangs invented an entire history of the band, including four fictional follow-up albums. (Wishful thinking!) Artists like Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix further popularized psychedelic rock, and the genre’s influence can even be heard in the hard rock, heavy metal and prog rock that developed in its wake. Even without knowing how historically significant Count Five’s one and only album would become, though, its fuzztone-filtered primal energy is well worth any garage rock devotee’s attention. 

RECOMMENDED READING & LISTENING 

📰 John Byrne and the Birth of Psychotic Reaction - San Jose Rocks

A great overview of the band’s rapid rise to success, including Byrne’s charming recollections of that period. 

📰 "Psychotic Reaction" (Live) - ABC-TV's "Where the Action Is"

This taped live performance comes from an October 4, 1966 television appearance. At the time, “Psychotic Reaction” was #9 on Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart; five days later it would peak at #5 (remaining in that spot for two weeks, and staying on the chart for 12.) 

📰 Count Five: The Story Behind the One-Hit Wonder Garage Rock Band From San Jose Who Created "Psychotic Reaction" - by Devorah Ostrov (originally published in Rave Up; now hosted on Blogspot) 

An in-depth interview with John “Mouse” Michalski (lead guitar), John “Sean” Byrne (rhythm guitar and co-lead vocalist) and Kenn Ellner (tambourine, harmonica, and co-lead vocalist). They discuss San Jose’s music scene, band line-up changes, early gigs, their big break and more. Includes lots of archival concert flyers and promo pics, too. 

DEEP CUTS WE LOVE…

“Double Decker Bus” - The album opener is basically a double-time rewrite of their hit single, complete with an explosive rave-up midsection and a hefty dose of tasty harmonica licks. Raucous, rabble-rousing fun. 

“Peace of Mind” - This Kinks-esque follow-up single to “Psychotic Reaction” is another contender for best track on the album. A cacophonous blend of strident, wailing guitar; thumping surf drums and liberal use of controlled feedback are all barely held together by a propulsive three-note bass groove. Listen out for the guitar played in reverse, an allusion to the Beatles, who pioneered the trick on “I’m Only Sleeping.” 

“Pretty Big Mouth”  - This jam is a shambolic groove with hints of swamp rock. Insistent circular fuzz riff; tossed-off, whining vocals and a clever key change at the chorus make it a convincing example of the devil-may-care swagger every mid-’60s garage band aspired to. 

DID YOU KNOW?

• Count Five was literally a garage band when they finalized the lineup you hear on Psychotic Reaction. Irish national John “Sean” Byrne had just moved to San Jose, California from Dublin and was sitting on his porch when he heard the band (then called the Squires) practicing R&B and British Invasion covers across the street. Byrne asked if he could sit in, and–being the closest thing the suburbanite punks had ever seen to a Beatle–they immediately decided "they would not let [him] go."
• The band’s decision to take on John Byrne as a member turned out to be a good call: Byrne went on to write the band’s defining hit, on which he played guitar and sang lead. The spark of inspiration for the hit came in early 1966, as Byrne was sleepily listening to a Health Education class lecture on psychosis and neurosis. A classmate leaned over and whispered, "You know what would be a great name for a song? Psychotic Reaction!" By that night, Byrne had written a rough version of the track. 
• In their early days, Count Five were known for starting their live sets wearing Dracula-style capes. This was a punning nod to their band name, which was also intended as an homage to English rockers the Dave Clark Five. 
• After they had a radio hit, Count Five turned down a million dollars' worth of tour offers. Why? Because they were determined to finish college. The band members continued to play music throughout their lives–even reuniting for one final show in 1987–but always as a hobby, not a career. 
• In 1972 “Psychotic Reaction” was included on an Elektra compilation called “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968.” The sampler quickly became a highly coveted cult classic, sparking a second wave of interest in Count Five. 

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