MAY 10, 2017
“ECSTACY TO FRENZY” (WRITER: JOHN KURZAWA, RODD KEITH [UNCREDITED])
RELEASED 1968 ON 7” 45
This is a “song-poem”
record.
(What is that?)
(What is that?)
Going back to at
least the 1940s, would-be songwriters, encouraged by ads in magazines, sent their
lyrics (and a fee) to companies that made records of them, writing the music
and recording the track.
Some of these
song-poems are incompetent, most are dull, and a few are sublime. Many are
entertaining. None of these efforts ever became hits, or anything close to it,
because these companies did nothing but send the buyer a box of records. Sometime
in the 1970s, collectors of odd records began to notice these discs and started
piecing together the genre’s odd history.
My vote for greatest
song-poet is Rodney Keith Eskelin a/k/a Rodd Rogers a/k/a Rodd Keith. A former
gospel organist, he moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s and found work in this
under-the-radar field. Keith was a supremely gifted composer and
instrumentalist raised on big band jazz, and he found “song-sharking” a
lucrative way to support his lifestyle.
Under time and
budgetary pressure, he cranked out hundreds of these records, writing the music
and arrangements, playing keyboards and saxophone, and singing. His career in
the song-poem field, which is all he is remembered for despite his tremendous
talent, lasted from 1965 or so until his death in 1974.
The lyrics that Rodd
Keith and other song-poem producers had to work with were usually clunky and
unpoetic and sometimes completely off the rails. Most were love songs, while
some commented on current topics like surfing, politics, drugs, hippies, go-go
dancers, or the Beatles.
Lyrics written by the man in the street and played by
exhausted session musicians on a shoestring budget created music that truly sounds
like nothing else.
Here’s perhaps my
favorite example of the genre. Sometime in 1967 or early 1968, a John Kurzawa mailed
Preview Records in Hollywood a quite sincere and accomplished set of words
about some sort of mystical experience, perhaps drug-related.
Rodd Keith, perhaps
hearing the Beach Boys and/or Beatles in his head, turned these lyrics into a
layered pop masterpiece that evoked and matched the best psychedelic music of
the day. It’s likely that he played all the keyboards and flute and sang every part
on “Ecstacy (sic) to Frenzy.” Del Kacher, who invented the wah-wah pedal, is likely on guitar but the names of the bassist and drummer are lost to time.
Despite its
provenance, “Ecstacy to Frenzy” doesn’t sound like the popular music of its (or
any) time, featuring a slightly Latin rhythm, out-there lyrics, understated
piano and guitar, that floaty flute, and an almost architectural vocal arrangement.
Rodd Keith, who by
this time had dived headfirst into the psychedelic culture, never bettered
himself. While many Keith often used the same backing tracks for different sets
of lyrics (because, with so many customers, who would ever know?), this music
bed seems to have been created expressly for this set of words and, to my
knowledge, not re-used.
Few people, besides (assumedly)
the lyricist’s friends, heard the record at the time. None of these song-poem companies
ever promoted the records; they were
in business only to make them. Some of these lyricists just wanted to hear
their words brought to life, while others hoped to become stars. Given their
obscurity even at the time, it seems almost a miracle that these records even exist
at all.
But people are still
finding previously undocumented song-poem 45s and albums. The genre is a
spectacular slice of Americana, the words and dreams of real people existing
entirely outside the web of mass-produced culture. My friend Bob Purse has an entire site devoted to them and labels have issued compilations of the best
(worst?) of them.
I hope that you enjoy
this record!
Hey! Thanks for the shout-out. This is a really good one, of course. My ranking of it doesn't come close to yours (and all of my favorite Rodd Keith records are from his Film City phase), but it's a damn good record, and shows that Rodd could have been cranking out hits if he had the right breaks, and if he'd wanted to.
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