“This is a man’s world!” – sentiments that James Brown, among many others have been saying for years. Things have been moving quickly to change that, a LOT, particularly over the past five decades. Brown continued in this song (actually the title of the song is “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World”): “But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.”
Many of James Brown’s songs were taken from catchphrases of the day – some that he picked up on, others that he popularized – such as “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine”, “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, “Don’t Be a Dropout”, “Night Train”, etc.
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Music in general, and rock and roll in particular started off as a man’s world for the most part, with rockers lagging behind rhythm and blues artists in that regard. In fact, going back far enough, entertainment in general was male-dominated: Men used to play women’s roles in early performances of William Shakespeare’s plays.
“Women in rock” is a Big Topic that deserves more room than this meager post, and I apologize in advance for omitting some of your favorites and giving others short shrift.
There is no question though that the relative lack of women in music led many to outsized prominence in their fields. For instance, the blues has been almost entirely an African American male form of music from the beginning until now, yet many believe that the greatest blues singer of them all is the “Empress of the Blues”, Bessie Smith, one of the greatest singers of the 1920’s and 1930’s.
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All I knew about Vera Lynn, an enormously popular English singer during World War II was the reference to her in the song “Vera” from the 1979 Pink Floyd album, The Wall. Thus, I was astounded (along with the rest of the world, I think including Vera Lynn herself) when a retrospective of her work that was released in 2009, We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn reached the top of the British charts. At age 92, she is the oldest person ever to achieve that feat in Great Britain.
Likewise, the few women who reached the top of their field are among the biggest stars in country and western music history: Kitty Wells, Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Reba McEntyre, among many others. In hip hop, Salt-N-Pepa burst onto the scene in 1985 and probably helped establish the musical genre altogether, back when rap was being dismissed as a fad.
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The early female rock stars got a lot of attention for their bands, with Janis Joplin in Big Brother and the Holding Company and Grace Slick in Jefferson Airplane (and later in Jefferson Starship and Starship) being two of the biggest. A current Broadway show called A Night with Janis Joplin features Mary Bridget Davies in the title role; Davies is good enough at her job to have previously toured with Joplin’s former band Big Brother and the Holding Company.
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Later, Deborah Harry in Blondie and Chrissie Hynde in Pretenders led two of the most successful rock bands of the 1970’s and 1980’s. The above record covers illustrate the difference in the way the women appeared within their groups, with Deborah Harry standing out among the men, though frankly, it could hardly have been any other way. Chrissie Hynde though is often regarded as being of equal status with the male bandmembers; what’s more, Hynde was also a guitarist in the band, whereas Harry primarily sang. This is a stance that alternative rockers would take later on, such as identical twins Kim Deal and Kelley Deal in Pixies and the Breeders.
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By the early 1960’s, “girl groups” were becoming more prominent in rock and roll. The Jaynetts achieved an ethereal sound with their 1963 hit “Sally Go ’Round the Roses”. Another one-hit wonder, the Murmaids took “Popsicles and Icicles” to the Top 3 in January 1964; the song was written by David Gates, later of the band Bread, while Kim Fowley worked behind the scenes.
A torrent of girl groups followed, among them Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, the Marvelettes, the Shirelles, the Ronettes, and the Orlons. Bette Midler’s revival of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in 1973 reminded rock audiences of the Andrews Sisters, who had had the original hit with “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” during World War II. More recently, the Spice Girls, TLC and Destiny’s Child (whence came Beyoncé) continued the tradition.
The girl group era attracted some of the greatest songwriters of all time: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, etc. Carole King would go to become one of the outstanding singer-songwriters in music history; her Tapestry album is one of the largest selling albums ever, with more than 25 million copies sold worldwide.
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Phil Spector perfected his renowned “Wall of Sound” technique while making girl group records, where massive amounts of music were recorded together with a subtle echo effect. “Sleigh Ride” by the Ronettes and “Da Doo Ron Ron” by the Crystals are cited as being prime examples of this technique. Phil Spector himself says that he reached his peak with the recording of “River Deep, Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner; George Harrison has called that song “a perfect record from start to finish”.
Phil Spector’s work with the Beatles on their final album, Let it Be is more controversial, with many contending that it was more overproduction than production in that case. Ultimately, the album was re-released in 2003 without Spector’s production and overdubs under the name Let it Be . . . Naked. Still, Phil Spector worked with John Lennon on several of his solo albums.
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The Beatles performed a sort of mini-Wall of Sound at the close of their masterful Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, not long after Phil Spector came along. Following the second symphonic build-up within “A Day in the Life”, the orchestra swelled into a crescendo, and then there was a thunderous piano chord (an E-major chord to be exact). Many people who have been around a piano marvel at how long the instrument can hold a note; and here, the Beatles were dealing that expectation up in spades with a long, slow fade for nearly one full minute before the sound faded into background hiss.
Actually though, it wasn’t just one piano: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and one of the Beatles’ roadies, Mal Evans were manning different pianos; while George Martin was playing the same chord on a harmonium. What’s more, the gain was gradually turned up as the chord faded in order to prolong the effect – at the end (they tell me), it is possible to hear background sounds in the recording studio: rustling papers, a squeaking chair, and the air conditioners.
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Among individual female performers, Madonna is rightfully regarded as paving the way for a parade of brash young women, including a bumper crop in recent years: Britney Spears, Mylie Cyrus, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, etc.
Melissa Etheridge rose to rock stardom in the 1980’s and was one of the first prominent lesbians in any field of entertainment. Also, VH1 had a series of Duets programs where Etheridge was paired with newer female singers, including Joan Osborne, Sophie B. Hawkins, Jewel, and Paula Cole. Each of these performers has had a solid career with several hit albums. After awhile, so many fine female performers were on the music scene that one of them, Sarah McLachlan organized a touring music festival featuring female singers or female-led bands called Lilith Fair. The festival ran from 1997 to 1999 and was revived in 2010.
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Melissa Etheridge paved the way for greater acceptance of gays in the greater American society and, not incidentally, opened the door for other lesbian musicians like Phranc, whom I have heard described as “everyone’s favorite Jewish lesbian folksinger”. Phranc has a strong singing voice and is quite adept at songwriting; she also has a punk rock edge that she has displayed on several of her albums. The above album that I own, Positively Phranc includes a rewrite of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” (originally recorded by Richman’s proto-punk rock band the Modern Lovers) as “Gertrude Stein”.
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Linda Ronstadt never seems to get enough credit as a ground-breaking female performer if you ask me. Her career started as a bandmember in the Stone Poneys, which was a sort of electric Peter, Paul and Mary. Kenny Edwards would later work with her again beginning in the mid-1970’s, while Linda eventually performed background vocals on a song on a 2007 CD by the other bandmember in the Stone Poneys, Bob Kimmel.
Everyone knows their 1967 hit song “Different Drum” – written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees – which appeared on their second album, Evergreen, Volume 2. By then, Linda was singing virtually all of the vocals solo (except on the album’s surprising psychedelic-flavored title track, “Evergreen (Part One)” which was sung by Kenny Edwards), but it wasn’t always like that. Many critics think that their first album, The Stone Poneys is even better; on that album, Linda Ronstadt sang solos on only three songs plus one verse of a fourth.
By the time their third album came out, Kenny Edwards had left the band; and in spite of pressure on Ronstadt from Capitol Records to become a solo act, the Stone Poneys managed to score another fine album, Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poneys and Friends, Volume III. The album included another Michael Nesmith song, “Some of Shelly’s Blues”, plus “Let’s Get Together” and “Stoney End” – several years before those songs became big hits for the Youngbloods and Barbra Streisand, respectively. And Linda Ronstadt was already showing her gift for spotting excellent songwriting by including no less than three songs by Tim Buckley, including “Hobo” (which Buckley called “Morning Glory”), which might be my very favorite Linda Ronstadt song of them all.
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After a few albums of (more or less) pure country, Linda Ronstadt perfected her sound when she connected with one of the top producers of the 1970’s, Peter Asher; he was also Ronstadt’s manager for several years. Peter Asher and Gordon Waller performed as Peter and Gordon, a British duo who enjoyed several years of success, particularly with their #1 hit in 1964, “A World Without Love”. The song was written by Paul McCartney but credited as Lennon/McCartney as was all of his music and that of John Lennon in the British Invasion period.
As a producer, Peter Asher was second to none in the 1970’s; James Taylor was his other main client. Together with his work with Linda Ronstadt, Asher helped create the Southern California sound of that time period by producing albums for J. D. Souther, Andrew Gold and Bonnie Raitt.
After working on a few tracks on Don’t Cry Now, Peter Asher helmed Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel; it was a #1 album and featured a #1 single, “You’re No Good”. Linda Ronstadt’s music is normally described as country rock, though she performs in a multitude of styles; as examples, Ronstadt covered numerous Motown songs in this period and recorded a New Wave album in 1980, Mad Love. This has required her to hire a variety of back-up musicians for her albums; several of the backing musicians for some of her recordings evolved into the Eagles. In her 1977 cover story for Time magazine, she was quoted as saying: “If you find a band that can play rock ’n’ roll, they can’t play a country shuffle to save their lives. I swear to God, if I could find a drummer who could play all that s--t, I would marry him.”
In performance, Linda Ronstadt mostly sings, though she sometimes plays a tambourine; however, I seem to remember seeing her play a guitar once. On her third solo album, Linda Ronstadt, she includes two live performances; and her live concert was the centerpiece of the 1978 film, FM.
Linda Ronstadt’s first songwriting credit was on “Lo Siento Mi Vida” (“I’m Sorry My Love”), which she co-wrote with her father Gilbert Ronstadt and her former bandmate in the Stone Poneys, Kenny Edwards. Ronstadt later recorded several Spanish-language albums, including Canciones de Mi Padre and Frenesí. While I was living in San Francisco in the mid-1990’s, I saw Linda Ronstadt’s name on a poster with numerous Latino performers that advertised an upcoming concert. It was a plain two-color poster in the Latino neighborhood called the Mission District and clearly was not aimed at her traditional fans. In 2011, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Recording Academy (known as the Latin Grammies).
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Over the years, Linda Ronstadt has had the wherewithal and the talent and the drive to try her hand at almost every musical form there is. After an amazing string of hit albums, Linda released an album of standards called What’s New, the first of three albums that she made with legendary conductor and arranger Nelson Riddle. It was the first successful album from the Great American Song Book by a rock performer and paved the way for numerous such albums by male and female rockers alike.
In 2004, Linda Ronstadt quietly released Hummin’ to Myself that was recorded with a jazz combo; it made #2 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart. Linda Ronstadt created an album of lullabies crafted from rock standards in 1996 called Dedicated to the One I Love; remarkably, one of these was the Queen arena classic “We Will Rock You”. Her holiday album, A Merry Little Christmas came out in 2000.
Linda Ronstadt also had a Broadway appearance in a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. On Adieu False Heart, she paired up with Ann Savoy on a Cajun/folk album. One of Linda Ronstadt’s final concerts was as a headlining act at the 2007 Newport Folk Festival.
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In the early years, most women only sang; those who also played a musical instrument tended to be folksingers, like Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Later on, both Baez and Collins moved more toward rock, and they have each recorded numerous amazing albums. Joni Mitchell, who wrote Judy Collins’ early hit song “Both Sides Now”, stretched herself even further; one remarkable album that I own is her 1979 album, Mingus that was recorded with jazz legend Charles Mingus shortly before his death.
Among full-blown rock bands that included female musicians, the experience of April Lawton in the band Ramatam might be instructive. Lawton was a true guitar virtuoso – rare enough among men, and almost unheard of among women – but you would never know it by listening to their 1973 album having the odd title, In April Came the Dawning of the Red Suns. April Lawton shows off her prowess well on “Excerpt from Guitar Concerto #1”, but that performance lasts all of 44 seconds. On most of the other cuts, her guitar work is overwhelmed in a sea of other instruments.
Breaking into the “boys’ club” of popular music can evidently be difficult even in one’s own band. This might be the reason that women tended to congregate in all-female bands in the early years.
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The first all-female rock band that was signed to a major rock label was Goldie and the Gingerbreads, consisting of Ginger Bianco (drums), Margo Lewis (organ), Carol MacDonald (guitar and vocals), and Goldie Zelkowitz (lead vocals). They were active from 1962 to 1967 and released a handful of singles; I got to hear some of their songs on a compilation album called Girls with Guitars.
Goldie and the Gingerbreads was hired to provide the music for a party in 1964 in honor of Andy Warhol’s protegé Baby Jane Holzer; other guests included the Rolling Stones. Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records was also present and promptly signed the band.
The Goldie and the Gingerbreads 1964 recording of “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” made it to #25 in the UK. Here in this country, Herman’s Hermits released “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” two weeks earlier; the heavy promotion of that song cut them out of the U. S. charts. After meeting Eric Burdon and the Animals, Goldie and the Gingerbreads was signed for a European tour, where they performed with the Who’s Who of the British Invasion: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Hollies, the Kinks, and others.
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After Goldie and the Gingerbreads broke up, bandleader Goldie Zelkowitz changed her name to Genya Ravan and joined a brass-heavy rock band called Ten Wheel Drive in 1969, where Ravan was accompanied by 10 male musicians. Before long, comparisons began to be drawn between Ravan and Janis Joplin.
In the New Wave era, Genya Ravan released Urban Desire in 1978; as is apparent from one look at the cover, this is a no-nonsense album from a no-nonsense woman.
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Ginger Bianco and Carol MacDonald of Goldie and the Gingerbreads formed a second all-woman rock band in 1972 called Isis. This band also had a strong horn section. They were signed to Buddah Records in 1973 and released two well-received albums plus a third for United Artists Records, though they failed to reach a wide audience.
Following a one-time reunion of Goldie and the Gingerbreads in November 1997 that featured Ginger Bianco and Carol MacDonald plus Genya Ravan, Bianco and MacDonald organized a new line-up of Isis in 2001.
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The second album by Isis, Ain’t No Backin’ up Now featured a guest appearance by June Millington; she has been described by Guitar Player magazine as the hottest female guitarist in the business. June Millington and her sister, bass guitarist Jean Millington had previously been part of another band called Fanny, which was the third all-female rock band to be signed by a major record label and the first to have a significant body of work.
After moving to the U. S. from the Philippines in 1961, the Millington sisters organized an all-girl band while they were in high school in Sacramento, CA that was called the Svelts; the other bandmembers were Addie Lee (guitar) and Brie Brandt (drums), who was later replaced on drums by Alice de Buhr. Brie Brandt has been active as a musician and also an actress for many years; under the name Brie Howard, she starred opposite Klaus Kinski in the 1982 science fiction film, Android. After the Svelts disbanded, Alice de Buhr started yet another all-woman band called Wild Honey that June Millington and Jean Millington later joined; they eventually moved to Los Angeles.
Wild Honey was on the brink of breaking up but made one last appearance at the L.A. nightclub the Troubadour. While there, they met Richard Perry, who arranged to have the band signed in 1969 to Reprise Records. After being signed, Wild Honey recruited keyboardist Nickey Barclay, who had played in Joe Cocker’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” musical ensemble.
Richard Perry had a previous connection with Goldie and the Gingerbreads also; Genya Zelkowitz was the lead singer in Richard Perry’s band called the Escorts when she met Ginger Panabianco, who was playing drums for one of Perry’s friends. Seeing a woman playing drums gave Zelkowitz the idea for an all-female band; they changed their names to Goldie Zelkowitz and Ginger Bianco and crafted the band name Goldie and the Gingerbreads as a play on their two first names.
“Fanny” is an interesting slang term: Here in North America, the reference is to the buttocks (hence the cover shot above); but in the British Commonwealth, it means the female vulva. Former Beatle George Harrison is the one who suggested the name Fanny to producer Richard Perry; the bandmembers themselves were not aware of its meaning on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean until much later.
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Richard Perry was the producer on the first three albums by Fanny: Fanny (1970), Charity Ball (1971) and Fanny Hill (1972); while Todd Rundgren produced their fourth album (the only one that I don’t have), Mother’s Pride.
June Millington and Alice de Buhr left Fanny after the fourth album; they were replaced by guitarist Patti Quatro (who was also a bandmember in the Pleasure Seekers) and Brie Brandt, who had drummed in their earlier band the Svelts. They came up with a final album in this line-up, Rock and Roll Survivors.
David Bowie is a big fan of Fanny; in Wikipedia, he is quoted as saying: “One of the most important female bands in American rock has been buried without a trace. And that is Fanny. They were one of the finest . . . rock bands of their time, in about 1973. They were extraordinary . . . they’re as important as anybody else who’s ever been, ever; it just wasn’t their time.”
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If Goldie and the Gingerbreads were the first all-woman rock band to be signed to a major label, and Fanny was #3, who was the second? That would be the Pleasure Seekers, which was Suzi Quatro’s first band In her memoir Unzipped, Suzi said that she and her sisters searched through the dictionary for a name for their band. They found the word “hedonist” and took their name for one of the definitions for that word, “pleasure seeker”.
The Pleasure Seekers were formed by Patti Quatro and were basically a Quatro family project: Bandmembers in their initial incarnation were Patti Quatro (guitar), Suzi Quatro (vocals and bass guitar), Nancy Ball (drums), Mary Lou Ball (guitar), and Diane Baker (piano). Baker’s father was in the jazz band led by Art Quatro, who was the father of the Quatro sisters. Diane Baker was later replaced on piano by another sister, Arlene Quatro; while Nan Ball left the band in late 1965 and was replaced on drums by Darline Arnone.
The first single by the Pleasure Seekers came out in 1964 on Hideout Records – which was associated with a popular Detroit nightclub called the Hideout – and is truly remarkable. At that time, Suzi Quatro was only 15, and Patti Quatro was 17. I first heard the excellent “A” side, “Never Thought You’d Leave Me” – one of my all-time favorite 1960’s songs by anyone – on Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 6, and it has been anthologized several more times. At an earlier time or in another context, the Pleasure Seekers might have been a “girl group”, with strong harmony vocals. But they are a band, not a vocal group, and this gives the song a completely different sound.
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I didn’t hear the “B” side, “What a Way to Die” until I picked up a retrospective of the Hideout Records label, called Friday at the Hideout. The theme of this song is incredible: The singer seems intent on drinking herself to death with beer (however unlikely that would be in practice). At a later date, the Pleasure Seekers were signed to Mercury Records and released a second single in 1968, “Light of Love” b/w “Good Kind of Hurt”.
Several fine rock bands are featured on the Friday at the Hideout CD; one of them, Doug Brown and the Omens released a promotional flexidisc in support of the candidacy of Republican Senator Robert P. Griffin during his first Senate campaign in 1966. The song, “Give Bob the Ball” – which championed his “youth and experience” – is included on this CD under the name “Youth and Experience”.
The Pleasure Seekers reorganized as a band called Cradle in 1969, after a fourth sister, Nancy Quatro joined as vocalist and percussionist. Cradle toured extensively through the U.S. and closed their career with a tour in Vietnam. A retrospective album of music by Cradle came out in 2011, and an album highlighting the Pleasure Seekers was released in 2012.
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Suzi Quatro was signed by Mickie Most to RAK Records in 1971 and moved to England, where she embarked on a successful solo career. She is the first female bass guitarist to become a rock star. Her albums presented Suzi Quatro alternately as confrontational – Your Mamma Won’t Like Me – and girl-next-door cute – If You Knew Suzi . . . . Suzi Quatro is probably best known to American audiences for her role as Leather Tuscadero on the TV series Happy Days; the character was the younger sister of Fonzie’s girlfriend, Pinky Tuscadero. On occasion, Suzi Quatro gave a musical performance on the TV show.
In 1974, Patti Quatro joined Fanny and appeared on their album, Rock and Roll Survivors. Arlene Quatro and her husband Leo Fenn – who was the manager of the Pleasure Seekers – are the parents of actress Sherilyn Fenn.
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Several years back, I picked up a cool album released in 2006 by a Spanish band called Suzy & los Quattro called Ready to Go!, I guess you could call a tribute to Suzi Quatro and the Quatro family. As with the Ramones and the Donnas – where, respectively, the last name of all of the bandmembers is given as “Ramone”, and the first name of all of the bandmembers is “Donna” – the bandmembers are shown as having the surname “Quattro” with the exception of bandleader and vocalist Suzy Chain: B. B. Quattro (keyboards and backing vocals), Johnny Quattro (guitar), Coky Quattro (guitar), and Tommy Quattro (drums). They released a second album in 2008 called Stick with It. Check them out on their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Suzy-Los-Quattro/96136455524?sk=info .
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When Fanny first came on the scene, they were falsely advertised as being the first all-female rock band. They might have been the first to release a full-length album, but I am not even sure about that. In any case, as noted, Fanny was the third all-woman rock band to be signed to a major record label, but there were dozens more who never got that chance. The series, Girls in the Garage includes songs by many such bands and runs to 12 volumes.
Another collection that I have, The Heart Beats & Other Texas Girls of the ’60’s: We Had the Beat includes several more all-female bands. But there are actually more songs on the CD by a singer-songwriter and past UARA Linda Pierre King.
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This month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band is a Los Angeles psychedelic rock quartet called MUSIC EMPORIUM. The bandmembers are Casey Cosby (organ and vocals), Dave Padwin (lead guitar, acoustic guitar and vocals), Carolyn Lee (bass guitar, acoustic bass, piano, organ and vocals), and Dora Wahl (drums and percussion). A rock band that was half men and half women was rare enough in those days; but in this case, the women represent the excellent rhythm section (bass and drums). In that respect, Music Emporium might be unique among 1960’s bands. Their eclectic background and the fact that three of the four bandmembers are classically trained musicians lend additional interest to their music.
Future Music Emporium bandleader Bill Cosby – who, due to having the same name as the famous comedian Bill Cosby, began to go by the name Casey Cosby – was fortunate to have acquired an accordion complete with eight weeks of lessons from a traveling salesman. He jumped at the chance to become a musician and eventually became one of the leading accordionists in the nation, recording four albums of classical accordion music. He won the U.S. accordion championship five years in a row and also was judged best at his instrument in a 1967 competition at UCLA that was sponsored by Frank Sinatra.
Together with Thom Wade (guitar and vocals) and Steve Rustad (vocals), Casey Cosby – by now playing the organ – formed a combo called Gentle Thursday; all three were members of the UCLA Glee Club. After changing the band’s name to Cage, and wanting to move toward a harder sound, he chose Dora Wahl as the band’s drummer; she was a percussion major at Long Beach State.
At the time, Dora Wahl (who, like Casey Cosby had also previously played the accordion) was the drummer for a 13-piece band called Brass Plus. Her 21st birthday present was tickets to a concert by Cream, where she got to sit directly above Ginger Baker’s drumset. Dora Wahl had become best friends with Carolyn Lee, the bass guitarist for Brass Plus, and recruited her for the new band that eventually became Music Emporium. Lee was proficient at string bass and was just learning to play electric bass.
Carolyn Lee of Music Emporium hadn’t started singing though until she joined an a capella choir at Long Beach State, where she was seated beside Karen Carpenter; Richard Carpenter was their accompanist on piano. The brother and sister would later become world famous as Carpenters, but not many people know that Karen was also a drummer – in fact, she described herself as a “drummer who sings”. Dora Wahl knew both of the Carpenters also.
After changing the band’s name from Cage to Music Emporium, the last of the four joined up, guitarist Dave Padwin. Padwin came from a completely different background and had been in a bar band in Chicago called the Prediktors. When Casey Cosby met him, he was working at a store called the Guitar Center.
The Los Angeles music scene was moving quickly during the late 1960’s, and Music Emporium went to see several of the new bands, with Iron Butterfly being a particular favorite and an obvious influence. Their song set early on included their classic “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” – the song title is basically a slurred “In the Garden of Eden” – plus two Doors songs, “Light My Fire” and “Back Door Man”. Music Emporium started out trying to be as loud as possible but were more mellow by the time they hit the studio to record their album. Unaccountably, Music Emporium played a lot of weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Casey Cosby knew a sound engineer at Sunset Sound named Bill Lazerus; the idea was that they would make a demo of the Music Emporium album and then re-record it at a record label’s studio. Another of Cosby’s contacts, Jack Ames of Sentinel Records – Ames had just left Liberty Records – bought the tape and decided that the music only needed to be remixed, with the vocals re-recorded.
Jack Ames spent a lot of money on a classy, die-cut album cover, so only 300 copies of the Music Emporium LP were pressed. The remarkable album became a collector’s item and was bootlegged several times. Eventually Sundazed Records bought the master tapes and brought out a proper reissue of the Music Emporium album on CD in 2001, Music Emporium. Besides the 10 songs on the original 1969 album, instrumental versions of 5 of the songs are included as bonus tracks on the CD. These bonus tracks demonstrate how well crafted the lush musical settings are and show the classical background of most of the bandmembers.
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All of the songs on the Music Emporium album are original compositions, with 8 of the 10 being written or cowritten by Casey Cosby. Four of these were composed by Cosby with Thom Wade, who had been in Gentle Thursday. Dave Padwin contributed “Sun Never Shines”. Milt Bulian – who has worked in the field of education for decades and now lives in the Jacksonville, NC area – describes himself as a “groupie” for Music Emporium; he wrote “Times Like This” and had been a member of Brass Plus.
The music by Music Emporium varies considerably and is never better than when Carolyn Lee is singing, particularly on the fantastic “Velvet Sunsets”. Casey Cosby handles most of the lead vocals, with Dave Padwin sitting in for his punky song “Sun Never Shines”. Casey Cosby’s organ defines their sound, though Dave Padwin’s guitar is also prominent.
The Music Emporium album opens with “Nam Myo Renge Kyo” that features chants of the Buddhist mantra that forms the title, along with psychedelic-style lyrics in the manner of the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. “Catatonic Variations” features an atonal structure that was just coming into vogue in the classical world, if I am remembering that correctly. The album closes with the obligatory protest song, “Day of Wrath” that features the tag lyric: “There is no question that there will be peace on earth / But will man be here to enjoy it”.
In 1970, Casey Cosby received his draft notice but managed to avoid Vietnam by taking a job at West Point playing accordion and heading up their glee club; he spent 17 years as an Instructor of Cadet Music there. Casey Cosby and Carolyn Lee were married shortly after Music Emporium broke up.
