During the tributes to Glen Campbell at this year’s Grammy Awards and Academy Awards, it occurred to me that I am more of a country music fan than I usually let on to other people – or even to myself. Besides the June 2012 concert appearance by the Flaming Lips as part of their mini-tour to set the Guinness World Record for the largest number of concerts in a 24-hour period (and travelling by bus no less), the only live concerts that I have been to in the past four (maybe five) years are the “Queen of Rockabilly” Wanda Jackson in February 2013 and Glen Campbell in August 2011. The latter concert was at the IP Casino in Biloxi after he publicly acknowledged being afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease and was a warm-up concert for Glen Campbell’s Goodbye Tour, which extended from August 31, 2011 through November 30, 2012. Part of the intention of the Goodbye Tour was to help ease the social stigma associated with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
I don’t really think of Glen Campbell as a country artist, although everyone else on Earth does, so it must be true. I suppose I would describe him as a folk-country, singer-songwriter – but country makes a good shorthand.
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Glen Campbell was born in 1936 to a share-cropper family in rural Arkansas, the 7th out of 12 children. He was taught guitar at a young age by his uncle Bob; and in 1954, he joined his uncle’s band that was known as Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys. His uncle had a radio show as well; and Glen also appeared on a children’s program, K Circle B Time, on KOB-TV. In 1958, Campbell started his own band, the Western Wranglers.
In 1960, he moved to Los Angeles to become a session guitarist. At about the same time, Glen Campbell also joined the Champs, which had a Number One hit in 1958 with “Tequila”. The song was written by bandmember and saxophone player Danny Flores, known as the “godfather of Latino rock”.
Glen Campbell quickly became highly sought after as a guitarist and played for a wide variety of artists in the 1960’s; Wikipedia lists recordings by Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Jan & Dean, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra.
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Glen Campbell was part of a loose aggregation of dozens of session musicians who performed more or less anonymously on countless hit songs, primarily in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They came from a variety of backgrounds but were typically professionally trained musicians in jazz or classical music.
Drummer Hal Blaine dubbed the group the Wrecking Crew; Wikipedia says: “According to Blaine, the name ‘The Wrecking Crew’ was derived from the impression that he and the younger studio musicians made on the business’s older generation, who felt that they were going to wreck the music industry.” Wikipedia lists an almost completely different group of artists in that article (as opposed to those listed above who were backed by Glen Campbell in particular): “Notable artists employing the Wrecking Crew’s talents included Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Vee, the Partridge Family, the Mamas and the Papas, the Carpenters, the 5th Dimension, John Denver, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, the Grass Roots, and Nat King Cole.”
The statistics about the Wrecking Crew are staggering, with various members appearing on tens of thousands of recordings. Hal Blaine is believed to be the most recorded drummer in history, while Tommy Tedesco is said to be the most recorded guitarist. From Wikipedia: “Blaine is credited with having played on at least forty U.S. #1 hits and more than 150 Top Ten records.” And their talents were not limited to records; again from Wikipedia: “Tedesco’s credits include the iconic brand-burning accompaniment theme from television’s Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Vic Mizzy’s iconic theme from Green Acres, M*A*S*H, Batman, and Elvis Presley’s ’68 Comeback Special.”
Hal Blaine and another drummer Earl Palmer were the first Sidemen inductees in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000; the entire Wrecking Crew was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2007. Wrecking Crew musicians formed the house band for the early concert film, The T.A.M.I. Show (1964); Glen Campbell can be seen in a few shots.
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Superstar record producer Phil Spector used members of the Wrecking Crew to create his famed “Wall of Sound”; while Beach Boys bandleader Brian Wilson used these musicians on their acclaimed Pet Sounds album and their Number One hit “Good Vibrations”.
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One of the first successful female session musicians is bass guitarist and guitarist Carol Kaye; she preferred the name “the Clique” to the Wrecking Crew, and she is credited with appearing on 10,000 recordings. Kaye once commented that at her peak, she was earning more money than the President. Wikipedia reports: “Her intense solo bass line, reverberating in quiet moments in [Phil] Spector’s production of [Ike and Tina Turner’s] ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, lent drama to the song’s ‘Wall of Sound’ and helped lift the record into the Grammy Hall of Fame.” Her work for Quincy Jones so impressed him that, in his 2001 autobiography Q, he wrote (as quoted in Wikipedia): “. . . women like . . . Fender bass player Carol Kaye . . . could do anything and leave men in the dust.”
Besides Glen Campbell, several members of the Wrecking Crew went on to great prominence in the music world, among them Mac Rebennack (better known as Dr. John) and Leon Russell. This time the Wikipedia quote is from one of my own contributions: “Also, Nino Tempo with his sister Carol (under her stage name April Stevens) had a U.S. #1 hit song in 1963, ‘Deep Purple’.” The song was originally a big-band hit in the 1930’s and a top seller in sheet music back when this was a more important component of the music industry; the music was written by pianist Peter DeRose in 1933, with lyrics added five years later by Mitchell Parish. The name of the British rock band Deep Purple was suggested by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore because “Deep Purple” was his grandmother’s favorite song; she used to play the song for him frequently on the piano.
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Glen Campbell is of course best known for his long string of hit songs in the 1960’s and 1970’s – beginning with the John Hartford song “Gentle on My Mind” in 1967 – and his many television appearances on such shows as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and his own The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (from January 1969 to June 1972). Adding interest to his appeal to me, there was a guy in my dorm when I first got to college at North Carolina State University who was the spitting image of Glen Campbell; he was frequently greeted with “Hey Glen” and even had the same smile.
His old friends from the Wrecking Crew lent a hand on several of his records; for instance (from Wikipedia): “[Carol Kaye] also came up with the famous intro on Glen Campbell’s greatest hit ‘Wichita Lineman’.” I have collected numerous albums by Glen Campbell over the years, and they are all first-rate from beginning to end.
Besides his long hit-making career and the requisite accolades – such as four Grammy Awards, three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards, and his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005 – Glen Campbell also appeared in several major films, most famously the John Wayne movie True Grit (1969) that earned Campbell a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer.
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But the real reason that I wanted to see Glen Campbell live when I got the chance was to see his prowess on the guitar, and I was certainly not disappointed. Before he started making hits, Campbell had released several albums of guitar music; the only times that I have ever seen them are in small pictures on his earliest hit albums, such as The Astounding 12-String Guitar of Glen Campbell. However, guitar solos are rare and short even on hard rock singles, never mind hit songs by someone like Glen Campbell.
Glen Campbell’s backing band at the concert that I saw were all or almost all members of his extended family, including several of his children. Campbell occasionally lost his place in the song lyrics and had to be repeatedly reminded of which song came next and how to start that song. But once he was on, he was on: Those fingers flew up and down the fretboard in breath-taking displays of virtuosity.
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The truly heartbreaking part of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis is that Glen Campbell had just launched a comeback a few years before, with his 2008 album Meet Glen Campbell that features Campbell covering songs by U2, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, and Green Day – “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” being the latter song – plus one of the last songs written by John Lennon, “Grow Old with Me”, and an early Jackson Browne song, “These Days” that was first recorded by Nico in 1967.
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Ghost on the Canvas was intended to be Glen Campbell’s last studio album and was released on the eve of Glen Campbell’s Goodbye Tour. Instead, a documentary directed by James Keach that was made during the Goodbye Tour came out in September 2014, called Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me. With co-writer Julian Raymond, Glen Campbell won a Grammy Award for writing and performing the theme song of the film, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”; and the song was also nominated for an Academy Award. By the 2015 award season, Glen Campbell was too sick to make public appearances and is now living in an assisted-living facility. Tim McGraw performed “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” at the 2015 Academy Awards.
As suggested by the title, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” is about the impact of Alzheimer’s on Glen Campbell’s own life and the lives of those he loves; the song begins:
I’m still here, but yet I’m gone
I don’t play guitar or sing my songs
They never defined who I am
The man that loves you ’til the end
You’re the last person I will love
You’re the last face I will recall
And best of all, I’m not gonna miss you
Not gonna miss you
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Apropos of this discussion, Julianne Moore won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of a real-life woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s in the film Still Alice. Her acceptance speech was one of the highlights of the telecast of the Oscars this month; in part she said: “I’m so happy – I’m thrilled actually that we were able to hopefully shine a light on Alzheimer’s disease. So many people with this disease feel isolated and marginalized, and one of the wonderful things about movies is it makes us feel seen and not alone. And people with Alzheimer’s deserve to be seen, so that we can find a cure.”
In his acceptance speech for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, J. K. Simmons urged: “Call your mom, call your dad. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call ’em. Don’t text. Don’t email. Call them on the phone. Tell ’em you love ’em, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you.”
To me though, people with Alzheimer’s deserve to be seen and heard not just to help push for a cure – that will certainly help the rest of us, but not those already afflicted. I would go further than these fine actors and say that you should reach out especially to your loved ones who have dementia or who are otherwise slower than they used to be. Some of the talking out of their head might simply be dreams that they had – and we all have crazy dreams. A little patience with them – say, when they tell the same story over and over – will richly reward not only their lives but yours as well. I treasure the times that I spent with my grandmother Alma T. Nowell, who lived practically across the street from us when I was a kid.
About four years after the death of my father Wallace M. Winfree, my mother Flora N. Winfree now needs a higher level of care at Brookridge Retirement Community following a scary incident about a year ago; and my brother Tom S. Winfree and sisters Alison W. Pickrell and Julie W. Kovasckitz cleaned out the apartment that my parents shared at Brookridge on the last day of February 2015. We were initially worried that some of the residents in that section who were much worse off than my mother would bring her down; instead, I hear that she enjoys entertaining them, and Mom has seemed more animated in my recent conversations with her.
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When I was in Nashville on a job many years ago – which is not called Music City for nothing – I sought out a live concert at a local club and quite enjoyed the performance by a long-lived roots/country-rock band called the Amazing Rhythm Aces. The album of theirs that I picked up shortly afterward is Too Stuffed to Jump (1976).
I was also able to tour the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, where I learned about the disparate forces leading to what is known as country music: rockabilly from Elvis Presley on down (my favorite form of country and, by now, maybe my favorite form of rock and roll as well), yodeling masters (particularly Jimmie Rodgers, whose 1927 hit “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)” was the first half-million–selling country song), honky tonk (the kind of music heard in early country music clubs, as personified by Hank Williams Sr.), mountain folk music (most importantly the Carter Family), Western music (often in the form of singing cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers – in fact, for many years the genre was called country and western), and Western swing (basically countrified big-band sounds). I don’t know too much about the latter strand, and Jimmie Rodgers is a bit old-fashioned for my tastes (though I have a compilation CD that I sure hope turns up among those remaining to be cleaned up from Katrina); but I have learned enough about the other foundational musicians over the years and other early forms of country to become a major fan.
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My final experience in Nashville on that trip was to see a musical play called Hank Williams: The Lost Highway that featured Jason Petty in the title role – he both looked and sounded like the man. The play was staged at the legendary Ryman Auditorium, the home of The Grand Ole Opry from 1943 through 1974. Much of the story turned on what Hank Williams should do with his masterpiece “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” that didn’t fit in well with his other work in this period. Ultimately it was released in 1949 as the B-side of his #2 hit “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It”; the song was later covered by numerous recording artists, notably B. J. Thomas, whose cover of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” hit #8 in the Billboard charts in 1966 and led to a re-release of the original song in the same year that just missed the Top 40. The Hank Williams version of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is ranked 29th among the 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music by the basic cable channel Country Music Television. Also, as stated in Wikipedia: “Rolling Stone ranked [‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’] #111 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the oldest song on the list.”
My father had an early compilation album called Hank Williams Memorial Album that was released not long after his death on New Years Day in 1953. Hank Williams is the first true country music artist that I remember loving.
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Like rock and roll, country music presented older music in new forms in the early days, though most of the material was new songs – or at least new to their audiences. Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers (“The Singing Brakeman”) among others are legendary songwriters as well as performers. Another early country-music legend Roy Acuff is also renowned as the founder in 1942, with Fred Rose (a talent scout and major music-industry figure), of Acuff-Rose Music; as described in Wikipedia: “Acuff-Rose’s honest behavior towards their writers set them apart from other music publishing firms at the time and led them to fame throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.”
For many years, I thought of A. P. Carter of the Carter Family as an incredible songwriter; his name appears as the writer for dozens if not hundreds of classic country, folk and gospel songs, but I found out later that he was actually acting more as an archivist or folklorist.
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The most famous music folklorists are in the Lomax family, specifically, John A. Lomax and his son Alan Lomax – Allmusic calls the latter man “a vastly influential ethnomusicologist, archivist, and field recorder who, by capturing the sound of rural America, begat the folk boom”.
Old songs were often not written down but rather transmitted person to person as one learned the tune and words from another. Songs that were performed throughout a nation or region might be handed down for generations; however, lesser known songs might be performed only among a few family members or a handful of friends and could easily be lost.
As an example, I have previously written of the origin of the Ritchie Valens hit from 1958, “La Bamba”. The 1987 biopic film about Valens also took the name La Bamba, and “La Bamba” as performed in the film by the Chicano rock band Los Lobos became a Number One hit that year. This song originated in Veracruz (one of the 31 states in Mexico) and was particularly popular at weddings, where the bridge and groom would dance to this music; “La Bamba” might date from as long ago as the 14th Century and is said to have 500 verses. From Wikipedia: “[Ritchie] Valens’ version of ‘La Bamba’ is ranked number 354 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is the only song on the list sung in a language other than English.”
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John A. Lomax began chronicling cowboy songs in the early years of the 20th Century. He had grown up in rural Texas and began transcribing these songs as a hobby at a young age. Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. notes in Allmusic:
“[H]is first book, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, in 1910, [was] a groundbreaking work that helped establish the validity of the American folk song outside of the British tradition. He also joined with Professor Leonidas Payne in establishing a Texas branch of the American Folklore Society, an organization committed to preserving folklore before it disappeared.”
However, John A. Lomax fell onto hard times, losing his teaching position and suffering from poor health that was compounded by the death of his wife. Allmusic notes that his son John Lomax, Jr. encouraged his father to go on a lecture tour to revive his spirits. Beginning in 1933, this led to his being commissioned by the Library of Congress – together with another son, Alan Lomax – to tour rural America with a traveling recording machine that weighed 315 pounds.
Benjamin Filene wrote of their work in his book Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music: “Over the next decade, John Sr. [John A. Lomax] and Alan [Lomax] would travel tens of thousands of miles and make thousands of recordings. They did so not with the detachment of academics but with the zeal of proselytizers.”
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During their first 16,000-mile trip to the South over just four months, John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax found Huddie Ledbetter in a Louisiana prison, who became known as Lead Belly or Leadbelly. The liner notes on the album of his that I have said: “Leadbelly is the hard name of a hard man”. The Lomaxes promoted him as an authentic American folksinger, and two of his songs rank high in the folk pantheon: “Goodnight Irene” was a big hit in 1950 for the early folksinging group the Weavers (whose members included Pete Seeger), and the country-blues song “Midnight Special” became the name and also the theme song of a popular musical variety program, The Midnight Special which ran from 1972 to 1981. The latter song was attributed by the Lomaxes to Lead Belly (that was the way that Huddie Ledbetter himself used the nickname); though the song is actually much older, Lead Belly apparently supplied several verses of his own to the song. The reference is to a late-night train that would lift the spirits of men in prison as it rolled past.
Over the course of this trip, John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax uncovered hundreds of songs leading to several important books: American Ballads and Folksongs (1934), Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly (1936), Cowboy Songs (1937), and Our Singing Country (1938).
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In 1938, Alan Lomax turned to jazz, including eight hours of reminiscences by one of the founders of the musical form, Jelly Roll Morton; and later, blues, prison songs, and other forms of music. One of his recordings, a haunting performance of “Po’ Lazarus” by a black prison chain gang from 1955, was featured in the 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou. Alan Lomax worked tirelessly for the preservation of music of all types until his death in 2001. He extensively chronicled traditional songs outside the US as well, leading to a 10-disc collection called Folk Songs of Great Britain (1961), as well as field work in Italy, Spain and the West Indies. Lomax hosted several radio programs, and television documentaries followed in later years. In 1993, Alan Lomax published The Land Where the Blues Began, which won a National Book Award. In 2012, the Alan Lomax Sound Archive became available online, offering some 17,000 recordings.
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I first learned of the Carter Family when I saw original member “Mother Maybelle” Carter joined by her children, June Carter Cash (Johnny Cash’s wife by that time), Helen Carter and Anita Carter – “the Carter Sisters” – on television and on the cover of a record album that I cannot seem to locate online. The group began using the name the Carter Family following the death of family patriarch A. P. Carter in 1960, so the term the Original Carter Family is often used to refer to the legendary group.
This newer incarnation has a makeup that one would expect of a “family” singing group; there have actually been many singing groups that are composed of various members of the Carter Family. The classic line-up of the Carter Family is somewhat unusual in this regard, being made up of Alvin P. Carter and his wife Sara Dougherty Carter, plus their sister-in-law Maybelle Addington Carter; additionally, Sara and Maybelle were first cousins.
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The entry on the Carter Family in Allmusic (by David Vinopal) begins: “The most influential group in country music history, the Carter Family switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals, made scores of their songs part of the standard country music canon, and made a style of guitar playing, ‘Carter picking’, the dominant technique for decades. Along with Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family were among the first country music stars. Comprised of a gaunt, shy gospel quartet member named Alvin P. Carter and two reserved country girls – his wife, Sara [Dougherty Carter], and their sister-in-law, Maybelle [Addington Carter] – the Carter Family sang a pure, simple harmony that influenced not only the numerous other family groups of the ’30s and the ’40s, but folk, bluegrass, and rock musicians like Woody Guthrie, Bill Monroe, the Kingston Trio, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan, and Emmylou Harris, to mention just a few. It’s unlikely that bluegrass music would have existed without the Carter Family.”
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When I came across the attractive album pictured above, The Famous Carter Family by the Carter Family and turned the album over on the back, I could scarcely believe what I was reading. Besides the usual credits, the listing of the songs also gave the dates when they were recorded: all within a two- or three-week period in 1928. And the songwriter in all cases was A. P. Carter. Could any one man really have written all of these incredible songs?
One of the songs, “Wildwood Flower” has perhaps the loveliest melody in all of country music. At the time, I knew the song only by reputation, and mainly because of “Wildwood Weed” (1974) – which is basically about marijuana – a #7 hit song by Jim Stafford that mentions the song: “The name of this song is ‘The Wildwood Flower’ / Now ‘The Wildwood Flower’ is an old country classic / It gained a whole new popularity / The song isn’t any more popular / But the flower is doin’ real good”. The song “Wildwood Weed” was written and originally recorded way back in 1964 by country singer and comedian Don Bowman.
But that was just the beginning. One of the songs is so timeless that it is hard to imagine anyone writing it: “Keep on the Sunny Side”. There are three bonafide classic gospel songs: “Can the Circle be Unbroken”, “Lonesome Valley”, and “Gospel Ship”. Another song was one I knew as a Woody Guthrie number, “Worried Man Blues”. The other songs I was not familiar with but quickly learned to love as much as the others. I gathered up a few more Carter Family albums and learned what I could about them.
I started correcting people that the song “Will the Circle be Unbroken” is actually named “Can the Circle be Unbroken”. Eventually I came across the “Will” title so much that I decided that I needed to look it up. It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that “Can the Circle be Unbroken” was reworked by A. P. Carter from the hymn “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” that dates from 1907.
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This would be a good time to relate my recent purchase of a one-of-a-kind, three-disc album called Will the Circle be Unbroken (1972). Unlike nearly all of the other rock and country collaborations that I know about, in this case the rockers hand the keys off to country music legends and let them drive. Ostensibly (or even technically) a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, Wikipedia calls the album a “collaboration from many famous bluegrass and country-western players, including Roy Acuff, ‘Mother’ Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Pete ‘Oswald’ Kirby, Norman Blake, Jimmy Martin, and others. It also introduced fiddler Vassar Clements to a wider audience.”
Wikipedia continues: “The album’s title . . . reflects how the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was trying to tie together two generations of musicians. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was a young country-rock band with a hippie look. . . . The other players were much older and more famous from the forties, fifties and sixties, primarily as old-time country and bluegrass players. Many had become known to their generation through The Grand Ole Opry. However, with the rise of rock-and-roll, the emergence of the commercial country’s slick ‘Nashville Sound’, and changing tastes in music, their popularity had waned somewhat from their glory years.
“Every track on the album was recorded on the first or second take straight to two-track masters, so the takes are raw and unprocessed. Additionally, another tape ran continuously throughout the entire week-long recording session and captured the dialog between the players. On the final album many of the tracks — including the first track — begin with the musicians discussing how to do the song or who should come in where.”
For any rock music fan who wants to learn about early country music, I cannot think of a better place to start.
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At a later date, I decided to look in Wikipedia to see if they had a list of songs that were written by A. P. Carter. Well, they did, but it was not at all what I expected: There are only 4 songs on the list. This was the real story according to the Wikipedia article on A. P. Carter: “Carter was known for traveling extensively throughout the country and collecting and blending songs, particularly from Appalachian musicians. Some of the songs became so closely identified with A. P. Carter that he has been popularly, but mistakenly, credited with writing them. For example, ‘Keep on the Sunny Side of Life’ was published in 1901 with the words being credited to Ada Blenkhorn and the music credited to Howard Entwisle, and ‘The Meeting in the Air’ has been published giving credit for music and words to I. G. Martin.”
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It pained me in the beginning to learn this about A. P. Carter, but I have gotten over it. Having such an outsized ear for great songs, and then finding and recording these songs for the rest of us is enough even if he never wrote a note of his own. In so doing, A. P. Carter went a step beyond what Alan Lomax was doing in actually arranging and recording these songs by his own singing group.
Songwriting credits were not handled so scrupulously back then anyway, and those practices continued at least through the end of the 1960’s. I have already mentioned in previous posts that Buffy Sainte-Marie showed her own name as the songwriter of “You’re Going to Need Somebody on Your Bond” on her debut album It’s My Way!; and that Deep Purple claimed to be the writer of “Hey Joe” on their 1968 debut album, Shades of Deep Purple (the musical bridge before the song was their work, but “Hey Joe” had already been a hit song several times by then).
On the first LP by Peter, Paul and Mary, Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) – one of the few folk music albums to reach Number One on the Billboard album charts – Peter Yarrow is shown as the writer of “This Train” (this gospel song dates back at least as far as 1927 and had been a hit in the 1930’s for Sister Rosetta Tharpe); Yarrow and Paul Stookey are said to have written “Sorrow” (better known by its full name “Man of Constant Sorrow” or “Maid of Constant Sorrow” and dating from 1913, both Bob Dylan and Judy Collins recorded it in the same time period, and “Man of Constant Sorrow” was also prominently featured in the 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou); and “If I Had My Way” shows a songwriter of Rev. Gary Davis (earlier versions of this traditional song exist under the probable original name “Samson and Delilah”, “If I Had My Way I’d Tear the Building Down” and “Oh Lord If I Had My Way”, the latter by Blind Willie Johnson from 1927).
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BRIAN OLIVE is this month’s Under Appreciated Rock Artist of the Month and is a super-talented singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is firmly in the rock tradition. His albums are a (mostly) quiet storm blending roots music and psychedelia, with an astonishing number of moods, and sometimes in the same song.
Along with the second album, Big Red and Barbacoa by past UARB Hacienda, I got a copy of his debut CD, Brian Olive in a surprise package of 3 albums that Suzy Shaw sent me in one of my Bomp! mailorder orders. Brian Olive was previously in two rock bands having long Wikipedia articles, the Greenhornes and Soledad Brothers, though there is no article on him individually.
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It is hard for me to pick out favorite songs on these albums; it is such fun just sitting back and listening to all the places that Brian Olive takes the listener. I will single out “Back Sliding Soul” as a particular favorite; this song is featured on the Alive Records compilation album, Where is Parker Griggs?.
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While he was still in high school in Ohio, Brian Olive was the guitarist in a band called Us and Them that released a four-track tape. The garage rock band called the Greenhornes that included some members of Us and Them was formed in Cincinnati, Ohio by Craig Fox (guitar and vocals), Jack Lawrence (bass guitar), Patrick Keeler (drums), Brian Olive (guitar), and Jared McKinney (keyboards). The group relocated to Detroit and released two albums in their original incarnation, Gun for You (1999) and The Greenhornes (2001). Brian Olive left the band to join Soledad Brothers before the second album was released, and Jared McKinney also departed the following year; Olive was replaced by guitarist and vocalist Eric Stein. This line-up of the Greenhornes released an album called Dual Mono in 2002. Eric Stein left in 2002 to join the Griefs, leaving the three core members – Craig Fox, Jack Lawrence, and Patrick Keeler – by 2003.
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Jack White of the White Stripes organized a band called the Do-Whaters that included the rhythm section from the Greenhornes, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, plus Dave Feeny, another Detroit musician and producer. They became the backing band for Loretta Lynn on her universally acclaimed 2004 comeback album, Van Lear Rose, which was masterminded and produced by Jack White.
As quoted in Wikipedia: “Rhapsody ranked the album #16 on its Country’s Best Albums of the Decade list: ‘Jack White, of the bizarre and bluesy duo the White Stripes, produced this effort to jaw-dropping effect. Van Lear Rose is a stripped-down effort that isn’t afraid to get dirty – both in its dark subject matter and in its raucous, gritty tones. And as much as this body of work highlights [Loretta] Lynn’s down-home vocals (which are as strong as ever), it’s White’s production that sends her crashing – literally – into the 21st century. On paper, these two disparate souls have little in common, but the bold excitement of the music proves the two are a match made in heaven.’”
At a later date, Jack White would perform the same magic for the 2011 album by Wanda Jackson, The Party Ain’t Over. It is doubtful that I would have had a chance to see her in concert in Bay St. Louis without the career revival that this album achieved.
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A collaboration by the Greenhornes with British singer/songwriter Holly Golightly resulted in the song “There is an End”; it became the theme song for the Jim Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers (2005).
An EP by the band called East Grand Blues came out in 2005, and a compilation album called Sewed Soles followed quickly. While members are involved in other projects, the three-member Greenhornes remain active and released an album in 2010, Four Stars.
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Jack White’s next musical project, the Raconteurs grew out of the Do-Whaters that had backed Loretta Lynn on Van Lear Rose; the band was organized in 2005 by Jack White, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler of the Greenhornes, and Brendan Benson (vocals, guitars, keyboards). Since a Queensland band was already using that name, they are called the Saboteurs in Australia. The Raconteurs was a high-profile band from the beginning, since Jack White was so well known.
Their first album, Broken Boy Soldiers was released in May 2006; it was named Album of the Year by the British magazine Mojo. The Raconteurs spent much of that year touring, including eight dates as the opening act for Bob Dylan in November 2006.
Another album, Consolers of the Lonely came out in 2008. By early 2010, the future of the Raconteurs was uncertain; Brendan Benson was quoted in February as saying: “I think we’re all just really focused on other things.” The band is on hiatus at present, though they have made several appearances during the past five years, including a partial reunion at one of Jack White’s solo concerts in late January 2015, when Jack Lawrence and Brendan Benson joined White on stage during his encore performance.
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The Dead Weather is Jack White’s current band and was organized in 2009; other bandmembers include Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes, Dean Fertita (previously in Queens of the Stone Age – he also contributed to the Raconteurs album Consolers of the Lonely), and Alison Mosshart (lead singer of the indie rock band the Kills).
The genesis of the band sprung from a concert by the Raconteurs in Memphis, when Jack White lost his voice; he asked Alison Mosshart to fill in for him on vocals. He later asked her to record a song with him and Jack Lawrence, and they met Dean Fertita at the studio. The Dead Weather has released two studio albums, Horehound (2009) and Sea of Cowards (2010); Live at Third Man Records West came out between these two. Another album is promised in 2015.
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Soledad Brothers was formed in 1998 in Maumee, Ohio. The name is taken from a trio of former members of the Black Panther Party who became known as the Soledad Brothers; they had been convicted of killing a white prison guard in Soledad Prison in California in January 1970. Efforts by a number of celebrities eventually resulted in acquittal during a new trial in March 1972, though George Jackson had previously been killed during a prison uprising in 1971, and the other two are evidently still incarcerated.
Soledad Brothers (band) grew out of a punk blues band called Henry and June, which was active from 1994 to 1996. This name is evidently a reference to American writer Henry Miller and his wife, June Miller – or more likely, an erotic film featuring the couple called Henry & June that is based on a book of the same name, Henry and June by the famed French diarist Anaïs Nin.
Johnny Wirick met Benjamin Smith when he joined Henry and June where Smith was already the drummer. They later formed a two-piece band called Johnny Walker; Wirick then took the name Johnny Walker as an alias, while Smith began calling himself Ben Swank. In 1998, they started using the name Soledad Brothers.
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Soledad Brothers released two singles for Italy Records and Estrus Records in 1998 and 1999, plus a self-produced album in 1998 called Master Supertone having a truly tiny release (just 20 copies were pressed). Jack White had produced the band’s second single, “The Gospel According to John”, and its success led to the album Soledad Brothers that came out on Estrus Records in 2000. The other half of the White Stripes, Meg White contributed some percussion to the album also. Besides their shared passion for blues rock, there were also personal reasons that led to this collaboration. Jack White and Ben Swank had previously been roommates, and Johnny Walker played slide guitar on two tracks on the band’s debut album, The White Stripes (1999): “Suzy Lee” and “I Fought Piranhas”. Walker is also credited with teaching Jack White how to play slide guitar.
A second Soledad Brothers album on Estrus Records followed in 2002, Steal Your Soul And Dare Your Spirit To Move.
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Brian Olive, who was then in the Greenhornes, was recruited by Soledad Brothers shortly before the release of their second album, Steal Your Soul And Dare Your Spirit To Move. In keeping with the stage names being used by the other two bandmembers in Soledad Brothers, Olive took the name Oliver Henry (“O. Henry”) during his time with the band. Additionally, Brian Olive and Meg White had a long-term relationship in this time period.
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I have the last two albums by Soledad Brothers: Voice of Treason (2004) on Sanctuary Records and The Hardest Walk (2006) on Alive Records. The Alive CD has an enlargement of their drumhead on the back cover, with the band name, the Black Panther Party logo (a panther naturally), and a slogan in Latin: “Libertas Unitas Fraternitas”. The meaning is “liberty, unity, brotherhood” and is similar to the slogan of the French Revolution – Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) – that remains the National Motto of France.
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Each Soledad Brothers album is more inventive and satisfying than the one before. Both of those that I have are excellent albums; “Downtown Paranoia Blues” from the most recent album was an instant favorite. Oliver Henry (Brian Olive) is credited on The Hardest Walk with fuzz piano, tenor and baritone sax, vocals, guitars, percussion, acoustic piano, flutes, and organ. Sadly, Soledad Brothers broke up within weeks of the release of The Hardest Walk.
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Brian Olive regained his name and sought to be in a band where he was the one calling the shots; that normally means a solo career. His debut album, Brian Olive came out in 2009 on Alive Records (the same label as the last album by Soledad Brothers). Brian Olive provides lead vocals and plays guitar, piano and woodwinds. Backing musicians include his old friends Jared McKinney and Craig Fox of the Greenhornes, Mike Weinel (formerly of Heartless Bastards), and Dan Allaire, who has been the drummer for the Brian Jonestown Massacre since 2002. Also there was a vocal trio assembled for the sessions composed of the Kadish Sisters and Donna Jay.
Writing for Allmusic, Mark Deming raves: “Most of the tunes on Brian Olive are rooted in rhythm & blues in one way or another, but the man sure isn’t shy about showing how many ways he can bend the sound to his will; ‘Stealin’’ is a funky New Orleans second-line shuffle, ‘Jubilee Line’ has a bassline James Jamerson would have been happy to call his own fortified with free jazz sax wailing, ‘High Low’ reveals echoes of 1950’s cool jazz for bachelor pads, and ‘Killing Stone’ is a piano-based rocker that recalls the early-’70s Rolling Stones. [Brian] Olive also dips his toes into breezy faux-tropicalia on the light and sensuous ‘Echoing Light’ and some tripped-out acoustic psychedelia on ‘There Is Love’. Olive clearly scores high on the eclecticism checklist, but he’s also a fine songwriter, generating memorable tunes regardless of his stylistic bag. . . . Overall, Brian Olive is an impressive and pleasing solo debut that shows his chops as a producer, arranger, and songwriter make him more than just some Midwest sideman, and he should get back into the studio posthaste if there’s more where this came from.”
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Brian Olive did as Mark Deming of Allmusic suggested; he was apparently already working on his second album, Two of Everything (2011) when the first one, Brian Olive came out. Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys co-produced the album with Olive, and the two also share engineering duties on this venture. Auerbach provides backing vocals along with five women.
Patrick Rodgers writing for Nashville Scene has this to say about the Brian Olive oeuvre: “Think high cooing vocals and airy harmonies above bluesy, gum-smacking grooves that simmer and shimmer, augmented on phenomenal cuts like ‘Back Sliding Soul’ by arrangements full of ear candy — underwater boogie piano, rump-rocking percussion, shrapnel blasts of rubbery guitar and greasy sax, and Esquivel-like electro-doinkage (wait, is that really a bagpipe?).”
Mark Deming was just as enthusiastic about this album in his Allmusic review: “Two of Everything doesn’t sound like [Brian] Olive has turned his back on his blues-based earlier work, but he is veering in a different direction; the results sometimes suggest a Midwestern take on Northern soul as Olive and [Dan] Auerbach throw just a little pop polish on Olive’s vocals and let the pianos and saxophones give the music a subtle but distinct retro feel, even as the steady pulse of several tunes nods politely to hip-hop. But even as Two of Everything travels down a smoother road than its precursor, it still sounds organic, committed, and heartfelt; and Olive sure knows how to write a memorable tune: ‘Strange Attracter’ faces a chunky, T. Rex-style guitar figure against an insistent piano-and-drum pattern that fills up the dance floor; ‘Back Sliding Soul’ suggests an unlikely but effective collaboration between NRBQ and Mark Ronson; ‘Left Side Rock’ bounces hard Southern funk rhythms off aggressive horn samples, and ‘Lost in Dreams’ is a beautifully languid bit of stoned soul love pleading. With Two of Everything, Brian Olive is two for two in making smart, distinctive albums that push his blues and R&B influences in unexpected, compelling directions, matching and building on the strength of his debut.”
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In June 2011 – the same week that his album Two of Everything came out – Brian Olive appeared on saxophone in the SuperJam at the massive Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. This time, the all-star jam was led by Dr. John and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.
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Dan Auerbach had wanted to produce an album with Dr. John exploring the territory that he staked out in the late 1960’s and 1970’s as Dr. John the Night Tripper. The result is Locked Down, a 2012 release, with Auerbach producing and several young musicians backing Dr. John. Among others, Brian Olive is shown as co-writer with Dr. John on all of the songs (as is Dan Auerbach), and he also plays saxophone.
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Brian Olive was one of several Alive Records artists who performed at the Deep Blues Festival in June-July 2012 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. A CD called Alive at the Deep Blues Fest includes two of his songs, “Traveling” and “Bonelle” (both on his second album, Two of Everything).
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Besides his own recording efforts, in recent years Brian Olive has produced several albums for artists like Electric Citizen and Daniel Wayne at The Diamonds studio in his new home town of Cincinnati, Ohio, where his two solo albums were also produced.
As an example, in the spring of 2014, Brian Olive produced the new album Diamonds for a Dayton, Ohio band called Cricketbows. The band’s vocalist and guitarist Chad Wells says of him: “Brian Olive was an amazing guy to work with. He didn’t try to push us to be something that we’re not and whenever we’d start to glide into a direction that felt insincere, he’d pull us back. He was more interested in getting a great, truthful performance out of us – warts and all – than trying to polish us or do a bunch of takes to achieve some manufactured perfection.”
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In July 2014, Brian Olive released a four-song EP called Move. Speak into My Good Eye – which bills itself as the top independent music source in New Jersey – says of the new release: “With Move, [Brian] Olive presents all the tricks he has in his solo songbook, especially those acquired while working with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys on a sophomore solo effort named Two of Everything (2011). Compressed in this tightly knit four-song package is an alluring bit of beauty and craftsmanship that certainly make the listener want to hear more music in this vein, and with any luck this is merely a preview of a larger recording effort to come.”
A full-length album is planned in the Spring of 2015. Brian Olive also has a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/BrianOliveMusic .
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On August 26, 2014, Brian Olive appeared on the Daytrotter sessions, a series of short interviews and musical performances out of Rock Island, Illinois. Wikipedia says of Daytrotter: “Daytrotter is a website for the recording studio Horseshack, which hosts recording sessions with many popular and typically up-and-coming indie music acts, although it works with local bands in the Illinois area as well. This innovative music studio was founded in 2006 by Sean Moeller. The sessions can be compared to that of a radio station’s lounge recordings, where musicians passing through the town can record live in the studio. Due to their tendency to offer an eclectic sampling of music, and their production style, the sessions have been compared to that of the legendary Peel Sessions.”
Of the 1200 Daytrotter sessions in 2014, the studio ranked Brian Olive’s appearance in the Top 100 (each got a colored sketch on the Daytrotter website).
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As a side project for the Rudi Protrudi band the Fuzztones that has been one of the leading lights of the Sixties Revival that is well into its fourth decade, Link Protrudi and the Jaymen were formed as a tribute to Link Wray and His Ray Men, one of the finest instrumental outfits in history. I just wish I had more of their music; I have three, maybe four Fuzztones CD’s, but only the one Jaymen album.
YouTube has a host of their songs on their website; they must have a lot of fans out there. “The Shadow Knows” is on the album that I have, Missing Links and can be heard at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWZrAPyRqw . “Orbit”, the leadoff track on Missing Links is available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wrDvqRzh0Q . “Bandito” has evidently gotten the most hits on the site: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6LqQ8LRhiE. There’s plenty more where that came from!
Picture Gallery: The Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for February 2012 – JA JA JA
Here is the front cover of their album:
And here is the back cover:
This is a group shot of the band:
Story of the Month: CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN (from September 2012)
