SHADY GROVE
Shady Grove is a 1969 album by Quicksilver Messenger Service. Nicky Hopkins, the English journeyman pianist joined the group for this album. Hopkins’ influence is felt throughout Shady Grove, and his contributions pushed the group in new directions. However, David Freiberg’s vocal presence makes the Quicksilver sound of the first two albums still apparent. Hopkins re-recorded the closing track, “Edward”, on his solo album The Tin Man Was a Dreamer, which features members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. (“Edward” was a nickname for Nicky Hopkins, made up by Brian Jones during a 1967 session at Olympic). (More from Wikipedia)
A side man can be a wonderful thing for a musician. For rock bands without keyboard players (and that was true of many in the 1960’s), Nicky Hopkins was the go-to guy if you wanted a pianist: He played with everybody from Jefferson Airplane to Jeff Beck Group to Steve Miller Band, and with simply every big British Invasion group: the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, and especially the Rolling Stones. His name appears on dozens of albums from the late 1960’s into the 1980’s. Hopkins released a couple of solo albums that I have never gotten around to buying, but I sure remember one of the first songs that I heard on college radio at North Carolina State University. It was “Edward the Mad Shirt Grinder”; Hopkins was officially a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service at that time, and the song was the final track on their album, Shady Grove (1969). Hopkins wrote it, and it was all his piano work along with a backing band.
(August 2011)
