A Song A Day: k.d. lang, "Save Me"

JUNE 25, 2017

“SAVE ME” (WRITER: k.d. lang—BEN MINK)

ARTIST: k.d. lang

RELEASED 1992 ON INGENUE CD

k.d lang had pretty well established herself as a rogue country artist, a Big Boned Gal from Southern Alberta, by the late 1980s. With her group, the Reclines—named for lang’s obsession with Patsy Cline—she had shown a feel for hillbilly music, western swing, and ballads.

After three albums with the band, and one solo effort in which she worked with legendary country producer Owen Bradley, lang was ready to stretch out.  Absolute Torch and Twang, her last project with the Reclines, came out in 1989. Her next album, Ingenue, came nearly three years later.

It was a stylistic departure if nothing else. This was an album of art songs arranged in a strange Chex Mix of 60s pop, exotica, and show music. Elements of torch and twang remained, but this time piano, vibraphone, woodwinds, interesting percussion instruments, and ambitious string arrangements pushed their way among the fiddles and steel guitars.

“Constant Craving” and “Miss Chatelaine” got a lot of play as singles, and every track was its own universe—a little Greek exotica here, some MOR country there.

lang and Ben Mink, who collaborated on Torch and Twang, wrote nearly every song on Ingenue. With adventure in mind, they co-produced the album with drummer/engineer Greg Penny. In content and title, Ingenue wanted to be heard as a new thing, and the gamble paid off. Most of her core audience stayed, and by diversifying she picked up new followers. She had wandered from the trail and found her own way.

Ingenue featured several classic tracks. Opening the album is “Save Me,” a generous pour of languid lounge with touches of shimmery guitars and tanpura. Gary Burton’s vibraphone creates hazy clouds, and a woozy steel guitar floats through the sky. The tempo is slow-slow-slow, allowing lang to caress some complex lyrics through a rangy melody and still leave a ton of space. Her harmonies are stratospheric, too.

I’ll stop talking about it now!

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A Song A Day: The Split Level, "Speculator"

JUNE 24, 2017

“SPECULATOR” (WRITER: MICHAEL LOBEL)

ARTIST: THE SPLIT LEVEL

RELEASED 1968 ON THE SPLIT LEVEL LP

Here we have a special track from an utterly obscure quartet’s utterly obscure album.

The Split Level—Michael Lobel, Liz Seneff, Al Dana, and Lenny Roberts—came together in 1967, some members migrating from the world of folk music. This makes sense, as the group’s sound is best defined as sophisticated chamber pop with traces of folk, adult contemporary, and rock, decorated with a creative progressive/psychedelic frisson.

Following the issue of a late 1967 single, “I Don’t Know Where You Are,” which only a little bit of radio play on the East Coast, Dot Records put out the Split Level’s self-titled collection of songs the following spring. The album made no noise on the charts, however, and the foursome was never heard from again.

The second track on the album is “Speculator,” a clever mix of madrigal harmonies, a pulsing and tense guitar figure, sound effects, and the Agnus Dei prayer. Written by Lobel, the group’s rhythm guitarist, it ranks with the most affecting anti-war pieces of the era.

Like Dylan’s “Masters of War,” Phil Ochs’ “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore,” and even Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” Lobel’s lyric takes to task those who profit from wars that poor people are sent to fight and die in. 

Unlike in those other songs, however, Lobel adds a distinctly Christian sense of muted outrage by including the Agnus Dei, which in English reads something like this:

Lamb of God, you who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

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A Song A Day: The Goldebriars, "Shenandoah"

JUNE 23, 2017

“SHENANDOAH” (WRITER: TRADITIONAL)

ARTIST: THE GOLDEBRIARS

RELEASED ON 7” 45 AND ON THE GOLDEBRIARS ALBUM, 1964

In 1964, Epic Records signed a two-man, two-woman folk group from Minnesota named the Goldebriars.

This quartet sang and played traditional songs and used banjos and guitars, but also wrote plenty of their own material. Interested in all sorts of unusual things, the quite bohemian Goldebriars relocated to Los Angeles, donned way-out clothes, and brought Jezebel—a fertility goddess from the Marshall Islands—with them everywhere as a good-luck charm.

The group’s leader was Curt Boettcher, a melodic and harmonic genius with gifts for composition and arrangement. His male cohort was Ron Neilson, who played the more difficult instrumental parts. Sisters Dottie and Sheri Holmberg provided the adventuresome, angelic harmonies that distinguished them from other such groups. The Holmberg sisters sang with clear diction but took their voices to new places.

Their first 45 release, in spring 1964, was “Pretty Girls and Rolling Stones,” an updated standard with writing credited to the group. This raucous hootenanny roof-raiser doesn’t quite succeed, but had more immediacy and harmonic sophistication than the music of other mixed-gender ensembles such as the New Christy Minstrels or Serendipity Singers.

“Pretty Girls” got little airplay and no sales. But in May, some DJs began playing the flip side, “Shenandoah,” a recasting of a melancholy old folk song that likely originated with northern hunters and trappers and their meetings with local Native tribes. It was usually sung by the likes of Paul Robeson or Tennessee Ford—men with deep voices who summoned the valleys and mountains with their rich tones.

The Goldebriars couldn’t compete with such a thing, so they did their own, utterly singular version. The Holmberg sisters took the lead with assistance from Boettcher, incanting male-perspective lyrics with no irony.

Transforming this tough, male folk song into a lush sort of international folk, a festival of interlocking harmonies, took some doing; this was daring, forward-thinking music. Producer Bob Morgan apparently deserves credit for helping the group with the overdubbed, multi-layered vocal arrangement.

Boettcher & Co. created, possibly by intent but most likely simply by following their vision, what a year later would be called folk-rock. The harmonies, ethereal guitars and autoharp, and carefully layered arrangement also presage psychedelic folk music by two years.

Given exposure in St. Louis by Top 40 power KXOK, “Shenandoah,” with its reference to the wide Missouri River, was an instant smash, vaulting into the station’s top five by mid-June. It also reached the top 20 in across the state in Kansas City. It got scant radio play anywhere else, though. As a result, “Shenandoah” never dented the Billboard charts and made just #148 in Cashbox.

Following two albums, the Goldebriars disbanded. Only Boettcher remained a fixture in music, quickly landing jobs producing hit songs for Tommy Roe and the Association and spearheading groups like The Ballroom, Sagittarius, and the Millennium. In these various permutations, he created some of the richest, most layered pop productions of the 1960s.

He continued to work into the 1980s without his earlier level of success and passed away in 1987 of a lung infection. Boettcher was just 44.

This isn’t among the most famous record he was on, but it’s one of my favorites. Hope you like it.

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A Song A Day: The Rock-A-Teens, "Woo-Hoo"

JUNE 22, 2017

“WOO-HOO” (WRITERS: THE ROCK-A-TEENS [ACTUAL], GEORGE McGRAW [CREDITED])

ARTIST: THE ROCK-A-TEENS

RELEASED 1959 ON 7” 45 AND ON WOO-HOO LP

One could argue that “Woo-Hoo,” by the Rock-A-Teens, is the quintessential 1950s’ rock and roll record.

“Woo-Hoo” cares not for the troubles of the world. “Woo-Hoo” just wants a good time on Saturday night, dancing with its best girl to a really good combo and maybe sneaking out the back of the dance hall for a quick nip of White Lightning when the musicians are on break. “Woo-Hoo” will risk getting home late, knowing full well it might lose car privileges.

“Woo-Hoo” is willing to be grounded for a good necking session.

“Woo-Hoo” is a clattery, ringing, rockabilly-ish basher with a strong attack, a basic chord progression, no lyrics (except the title), a classic drum break, and a few great screams. Amateurish it is, but also a lot of fun. It’s the garage rock—or, if you will, the punk rock—of the 1950s.

The six guys that created this record came from Richmond, Virginia. After playing enough shows to build a following, The Rock-A-Teens auditioned for a small local record company, Doran, owned by George McGraw. The impresario signed up the band and pressed up its raw composition, “Woo-Hoo,” in summer 1959.

The record started to sell locally. Soon, a guitarist named Arthur Smith threatened legal action against the band, claiming that “Woo-Hoo” was too similar to his “Guitar Boogie,” a popular 12-bar blues recorded in 1948. While both songs use acoustic guitar and are in the key of E, the similarity is hardly actionable,. given that Smith's tune was hardly original in the first place.

According to a bio of the Rock-a-Teens on the www.rockabilly.nl site, George McGraw now saw a big opportunity. When Smith brought his argument to Doran Records, McGraw convinced the six adolescents in the Rock-a-Teens to sell him the song’s copyright for a few hundred bucks so that they wouldn’t be sued. (“I’ll take care of it, okay boys?”) With copyright in hand, he let local distributors know that the record was now for sale to the highest bidder.

I’m assuming, though no one’s saying, that McGraw at this point paid Arthur Smith a nice sum to go away.

With “Woo Hoo” a regional hit, McGraw was sitting pretty. According to the September 9, 1959 Cash Box, several labels bid on the hot record. Roulette Records, a mob-connected New York label which issued records by serious jazz musicians as well as pop artists like the Playmates, bought the master of “Woo-Hoo.” No price was given but it was, according to the company, the most it had ever paid for a previously recorded master.

Roulette immediately rushed the record out, working its pressing plants over a weekend to get tens of thousands of copies of “Woo-Hoo” into distributors’ hands.

Cleveland teenagers were the first to latch on to this re-release. Other markets soon followed—Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles—and “Woo-Hoo” found its way onto the national charts by the end of the month. It charted in all regions of the U.S. and in Canada as well.

“Woo-Hoo” became a certified national hit, reaching #12 on the Billboard chart and #18 in Cashbox. It fell short of super-smash status, however, despite Roulette’s connections, aggressive print run, and promotion. It only reached #1 in one market: Minneapolis.

Trying to make the most of their investment, Roulette brought Rock-a-Teens up to New York to record an album, but neither it, nor their follow-up single, garnered sales or airplay. The Rock-a-Teens soon broke up.

I don't know if, 60 years later, anyone is still around to confirm this…but I assume at some point that the group realized that everyone—their crooked record producer, the record company, the record distributors—was making money off their efforts but them. Certainly they got ripped off, shucked, and screwed.

But “Woo Hoo” is one good record. And it’s not getting its hair cut.

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A Song A Day: Pete Holly & the Looks, "Look Out Below"

JUNE 21, 2017

“LOOK OUT BELOW” (WRITER: PETE HOLLY)

ARTIST: PETE HOLLY & THE LOOKS

RELEASED 1981 ON 7” EP AND ON BATTLE OF THE GARAGES VOL. 1 LP

As a young person growing up in Ronald Reagan’s America, the idea of going to fight some stupid imperialist war was certainly a concern. The Vietnam War was still a recent memory for people of my generation, and when I had to register for the draft at age 18, I was pissed off.

Plenty of us worried about this stuff. At what point would our atomic bombing of Japan come home to roost? How long would it take before our nationalism got someone angry enough at America to make us live through the unthinkable?

Of course, the ensuing three and a half decades have been more about America dying from a thousand paper cuts rather than one A-bomb, and we’ve done little in the last few months to make ourselves any safer.

This means it’s time, again, for Pete Holly & the Looks, a trio from Boise, Idaho that cut a three-song 7” EP in 1981 which featured “Look Out Below,” a simple song of paranoia and worry about the bomb. The band played this 60s-styled hard-rock song with punk rock abandon. Greg Shaw’s BOMP label released the EP in 1981, and also included “Look Out Below” on a compilation called Battle of the Garages, Vol. 1 that same year on his other label, Voxx.

To me, this was everything punk rock could be: immediate, topical, musical, raw, morbidly funny, scared, determined, tuneful. Those of us who knew it loved it.

Pete Holly, a true outsider, continued to record but never reached stardom or anything like it. He died in Idaho in 2010.

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