Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

There isn”t much I remember specifically about the late summer and autumn of 1980. We holidayed in Czechoslovakia and Austria, I despised school, my granny died, and I read English football magazines to brush up on my English skills. But I recall the vibe of that time, and these songs help conjure it.

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Kelly Marie – Feels Like I’m In Love.mp3
Here”s a great bit of trivia: Feels Like I”m In Love was written by Ray Dorset, the mutton-chopped frontman of Mungo Jerry, specifically for Elvis Presley. Alas, before Dorset could pitch the song to Elvis, the rhinestoned king died. But imagine Elvis singing Feels Like I”m In Love; with a different arrangement and perhaps slowed down a bit. Sounds like a hit to me. Of course, English disco starlet Kelly Marie also enjoyed a hit with it, a UK #1, and quite rightly so: it”s a very good song. I remember it being hugely popular at the funfair; when I hear it I smell candyfloss, sugar-roasted almonds and Bratwurst.

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Randy Newman – The Story Of A Rock And Roll Band.mp3
This is the bit where the threads of an American songwriter of wit and style and German football meet. Randy Newman was so much a fan of the Electric Light Orchestra that he penned a tribute to the band. The lyrics are, by Newman”s standards, fairly artless, but in his own way, Newman manages to recreate the ELO sound in an affectionate homage, while still sounding like Randy Newman.  Turn To Stone seems to Randy”s favourite ELO song, though he does recognise other worthy contenders. I was so taken by Newman”s tribute that I bought the LP, with its crap cover pic.

At the same time, my favourite football player ““ and when you”re 14, a favourite player is a semi-deity ““ was the diminutive but brilliant winger Pierre Littbarski, who played for my favourite club. Sporting exploits aside (and, at 20, he was not a star yet in 1980), there are three things I remember about Littbarski: he was a chocaholic, he supported the conservative CDU (boo!), and he was a huge ELO fan.

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Joan Armatrading – Me Myself I.mp3
Looking back, it seems that by now I was more into LPs than I was into singles. I bought Joan Armatrading”s  Me, Myself, I album on strength of its title track, with that abrasive guitar riff and Chris Spedding”s wonderful guitar solo , Cape Town-born Anton Fig”s thumping drums, the tempo changes and the catchy chorus. I still like the album a lot: All The Way From America, Feeling In My Heart (For You), and especially Turn Out The Lights remain great songs. At this point I had not yet become a Springsteen fan, though that was going to happen fairly soon. But the presence of Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons on the album would have been an added bonus. It also featured Paul Shaffer, David Letterman”s annoying houseband leader, on keyboards. At one point, all of those who appeared on the song were members of the houseband, having met while recording with Joan Armatrading.

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Styx – Boat On The River.mp3
Yeah, I know it came out in 1979, but Boat On The River didn”t get much airplay on German radio until 1980. In fact, on our local station at least, this was bigger than the megahit from the same album, Babe. Perhaps it reminded the playlist compilers of those Slavic-sounding Schlager hits that were in vogue a decade earlier. I bought the Cornerstones LP, but I don”t think I ever listened to it in full, other than Boat On The River and Babe.

In past instalments of this series, I described how my grandmother bought me my first single (see HERE) and how she helped finance my fast-growing singles collection. The Styx and Armatrading albums were the final music acquisitions she funded. She had actually given me the money to buy new trainers. But instead of purchasing the medium range shoes my budget allowed for, I decided to go for a bargain (still cool: yellow Pumas with a black stripe), and use the difference to buy the two LPs. My mom was not impressed with me. My grandmother died a few weeks later at the age of 85.

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The Police – Driven To Tears.mp3
Liking The Police in the West Germany of 1980 was the mature and cool choice. Many of my friends loved AC/DC (good) and Kiss (meh). And a few sung the praises of Gerry Rafferty, even though his City To City album, released two years earlier, was quite ancient. But mention that you like The Police, and people would respect you, much like the neighbourhood respected the teenage Henry Hill in GoodFellas. Soon The Police became really massive and I had to abandon them, but when they released their Zenyatta Mondatta album in 1980, I played it to death.  I also played it to my stepfather when we were wallpapering my room, seeing as he had enjoyed the music of Bob Seger which I had introduced him to. He assured me that he liked the album. Looking back, I think he was lying.

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Diana Ross – My Old Piano.mp3
Upside Down had already been a hit, but it was this track that turned me on to Diana Ross, whom I had hitherto regarded, in my unformed ways, as part of the musical wallpaper, the sort of star who is a star because she is a star. Well, it wasn”t really Ms Ross whom I loved this song for, but the production. It”s a great, catchy number, with the sort of funky bass and cool strings you”d associate with a Nile Rogers and Bernie Edwards production. And then there was the fantastic piano and guitar solo; I presume Rogers did the guitar part, and I guess the piano solo was either by Raymond Jones or Andy Schwartz.

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Nick Mackenzie – Hello Good Morning.mp3
This is a terrible song. And when I think of 1980 it sticks in my head like the fumes from the gas released by a decomposing body that sticks on the clothes of your favourite CSI agent. Personally, I think they are all rubbish, none more so that sunglasses juggling fool from the Miami franchise, though I have a theory that David Caruso might play him with a bit of wink, creating a sardonic self-parody to offset the stink of the preposterous scripts; rather unlike Lieutenant Dan over in New York, who seems to play his equally preposterous role with a straight bat. But I digress. So, yeah, Nick Mackenzie was, as his name fails to suggest, from the Netherlands where apparently he was alternately known as Henk van Broekhoven and Nick van der Broeke, which might be a pun on his surname involving the Dutch word for trousers. And that is pretty much all you need to know as you decide whether Hello Good Morning is any good. Take his name or my word for it: it isn”t.

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More Stepping Back

Almost all of the previous 36 instalments of The Originals consisted of five songs each. The inaugural post had ten tracks, one (or was it two?) had six. Which makes for 186 tracks that have been, well, covered. Truth be told, researching five songs at a time has been so much a burden on my time that at times I”ve not been motivated to start a new post. Maybe by reducing the number to three I”ll update this series more enthusiastically in future. I still have many lesser-known originals to write about.

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Cowboy Copas ““ Tennessee Waltz (1948).mp3
Pee Wee King ““ Tennessee Waltz (1948).mp3
Patti Page ““ Tennessee Waltz (1950).mp3
Les Paul & Mary Ford – Tennessee Waltz (1951).mp3
Sam Cooke – Tennessee Waltz (1964).mp3
On a Friday night in 1946, country singer and accordionist Pee Wee King (who was born by the decidedly un-country name Julius Kuczynski in Milwaukee) was driving with Redd Stewart, fiddler and singer with King”s Golden West Cowboys, to Nashville when the radio played bluegrass legend Bill Monroe”s Kentucky Waltz. Wondering why nobody ever dedicated a waltz to Tennessee “” home to country music capital Nashville, after all “” they decided to relieve the boredom of the long drive by writing one, setting lyrics, written on a matchbox, to an instrumental they had been playing in concerts, the No Name Waltz.

One might think that Pee Wee King”s version, with Stewart on vocals, would be the first to be recorded. However, he was scooped by Cowboy Copas, who would perish on the plane that killed Patsy Cline (one of the many who later covered Tennessee Waltz). Lloyd Copas had been a singer with Pee Wee King”s band in the early 1940s, succeeding Eddy Arnold. It may be that Pee Wee first gave the song to his old frontman, who made a recording of it in April 1947 for (ironically) King Records in Cincinnatti, and another in June that year. It is most likely the latter recording that was released in March 1948 and became a #3 country hit. Pee Wee King recorded his version in December 1947. Also released in early 1948, it also peaked at #3, but at half a million copies sold more than Copas” take.

By 1950, Tennessee Waltz had become something of a country classic, and even jazz singer Anita O”Day had covered it, when it became a mammoth crossover hit for Patti Page, whose version remains the best known. It topped the pop, country and R&B charts simultaneously, a unique feat. As so often, the big hit was first a b-side, in this case to the less than immortal Boogie Woogie Santa Claus. For a b-side, much effort went into the production, which used a rudimentary form of vocal overdubbing to go with the backing track by the Jack Rael Orchestra. An acetate was recorded of Page singing the song, and this would be played into one microphone while Page sang into a second microphone. Page”s version of her dad”s favourite song went on to sell 6 million copies.

Tennessee Waltz was awarded BMI”s 3,000,000 Airplay Award in 2004. Only five other songs have achieved that honour.

Also recorded by: Roy Acuff (1949), Jo Stafford (1950), Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians (1950), John “˜Schoolboy” Porter (1950), Stick McGhee (1950), Anita O’Day (1951), Spike Jones (1951), The Fontane Sisters (1951), Eddy Arnold (1956), Floyd Cramer (as part of a medley, 1957), The Louvin Brothers (1958), Bill Vaughn (1958), Faron Young (1959), Connie Francis (1959), Chet Atkins (1959), Bobby Comstock & The Counts (1959), Jerry Fuller (1959), Four Jacks (1960), Red Hewitt & the Buccaneers (1960), Tennessee Ernie Ford (1960), Grady Martin and The Slewfoot Five (1960), Kitty Wells (1960), Gus Backus (1960), Don Robertson (1961), Webb Pierce (1962), Homer & Jethro (1962), Pat Boone (1962), The Violents (1962), Alma Cogan (1964), Anna King (1964), Sam Cooke (1964), Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas (1965), Chet Atkins (1966), Slim Whitman (1966), Manfred Mann (1966), Ernest Tubb (1966), Ray Brown & the Whispers (1966), Otis Redding (1966), Richard “Groove” Holmes and the Super Soul Big Band (1967), Chuck Jackson & Maxine Brown (1967), Johnny Jones (1968), American Soul Train (1968), Dottie West (1968), Sue Thompson (1969), Leon Haywood (1969), Ferlin Husky (1969), Don Gibson (1969), Napoleon Jr (1969), Danny Davis & the Nashville Brass (1970), Lou Donaldson (1970), Bobbi Martin (1971), David Bromberg (1972), American Spring (1972), Boots Randolph (1974), Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass (1976), Pete Tex (1976), Gitte (1977), Anne Murray (1978), Tielman Brothers (1979), Lacy J. Dalton (1980), Emmylou Harris (1981), Billie Jo Spears (1981), James Brown (1983), Willie Nelson & Hank Williams (1984), Audrey Landers (1986), George Adams (1989), Holly Cole Trio (1993), Tom Jones with the Chieftans (1995), Richard Hindman Trio (1995), Sally Timms (1997), Linda Martin (1998), James Last (1998), Sarah Harmer & Jason Euringer (1999), Sam Moore (2002), André Rieu (2002), Joel Harrison feat. Norah Jones (2002), Eva Cassidy (released in 2002), Joel Harrison (2003), Leonard Cohen (2004), Herb Alpert (2005), Hem (2006), Pete Molinari (2009), Isabelle Boulay (2009) a.o.

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Johnny & Jackey – Someday We’ll Be Together (1961).mp3
Diana Ross and the Supremes – Someday We’ll Be Together (1969).mp3
Frederick Knight – Someday We”ll Be Together (1973).mp3
The Supremes” sentimental farewell song with Diana Ross proved less than prescient (if we disregard the awkward performance of it on 1983″s Motown 25th anniversary show), and La Ross probably never thought that she “made a big mistake” by leaving.

The song was originally recorded in 1961 by the R&B duo Johnny & Jackie, in a Drifters-style arrangement. The Johnny half of the Detroit duo was Johnny Bristol, and Jackey was his singing and songwriting partner “” and ex-air force compadre “” Jackey Beavers. They co-wrote Someday We’ll Be Together with the great Harvey Fuqua, on whose Tri-Phi label the single appeared. It was not a big hit, and after several years of trying, Bristol and Beavers went their separate ways, with Jackey signing for Chess Records.

Bristol went on to become a noted producer on Motown, working with Fuqua on songs such as Marvin Gaye”s Ain”t No Mountain High Enough and David Ruffin”s My Whole World Ended. Bristol had the distinction of producing the final singles by both the Supremes and the Miracles before their headliners departed. That means, of course, that Bristol produced the song which he had co-written and first recorded for Diana Ross and the Supremes. The other Supremes didn”t actually appear on it (which makes the decision to play Some Day We’ll Be Together at Florence Ballard”s funeral seem quite odd). Bristol had intended the song for Jr Walker and the All Stars, for whom he had already written the hit What Does It Take (To Make You Love Me). He had laid down the arrangement and backing vocals, by Maxine and Julia Waters, when Gordy decided that this would be the song with which to launch Diana”s solo career. On reflection, probably because of the title, he instead issued it as a farewell song for Diana Ross and the Supremes.

The male voice on the song is Bristol”s. Not satisfied with Ross” performance, he harmonised with her, ad libbing encouragements. The sound engineer accidentally captured these, and the since it sounded good, it was decided to keep them in. Diana Ross & the Backing Singers” single topped the US charts (perhaps fittingly, the last chart-topper of the “60s) , which meant that Berry Gordy, who was intent on having the Ross-led Supremes go out with a #1, could release Reach Out And Touch (Somebody”s Hands) as Diana”s solo debut.

Johnny Bristol, who died in 2004, continued producing after leaving Motown (he lent Boz Scaggs that blue-eyed soul inflection), and had some success as a singer, most notably with the 1974 hit Hang On In There Baby. He also wrote and recorded the first version of the Osmonds” hit Love Me For A Reason, which will feature later in this series.

Frederick Knight”s 1973 version slows down the song and gives it a proper southern soul treatment. It was not a hit, but it may be the best version of the song (by the man who went on to write Anita Bell”s disco classic Ring My Bell).

Also recorded by: Boogaloo Joe Jones (1970), Brenda & the Tabulations (1970), Shirley Scott (1970), The Marvelettes (1970), Bobby Darin (1971), Bill Anderson & Jan Howard (1972), Dionne Warwicke (1972), Frederick Knight (1973), The Pointer Sisters (1982), Lorrie Morgan (1983), Jimmy Somerville (1995), LaToya Jackson (1995), Vonda Shepard (1999)

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Bolland – You’re In The Army Now (1983).mp3
Status Quo – In The Army Now (1986).mp3
The year 1986 was lucrative for the brothers Bolland, Rob and Ferdi. First their song Rock Me Amadeus, performed by the Austrian cult singer Falco, topped the UK charts (having been a huge hit in Europe the previous year), and then Status Quo hit the top 10 with their cover of the brothers” 1981 song In The Army Now.

Born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa (in the same region that gave the world the entirely unneccesary Dave Matthews), the Bolland brothers had emigrated to the Netherlands, and started their recording career in 1972 as a folk-rock duo along the lines of Simon & Garfunkel. When that genre became passé, they hooked into the electronic sounds of the late 1970s. In The Army Now was a big hit in South Africa, where conscription applied to only white men, many of whom were sent to fight in the war with Angola, apartheid”s Vietnam. The single did only moderately well elsewhere, and the Bolland brothers became record producers, counting among their clients Falco, Amii Stewart, Samantha Fox, Suzi Quatro and Dana International.

Meanwhile, Status Quo”s Francis Rossi had heard In The Army Now on the radio while driving in Germany, and proposed it to his band, which by now had lost bassist Alan Lancaster and drummer John Coughlan. The song took the Quo to #2 in Britain.

Also recorded by: Laibach (1994), Les Enfoirés (as Ici les Enfoirés, 2009)

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More Originals

In December I posted a funk/disco mix-tape (meaning the songs don’t fade into each other), covering the golden era 1978-1983, and fitting on one CD-R. It was downloaded more than 1,300 times, and received the grand total of one comment. But that commenter was so pleased with the Any Major Funk mix, he or she asked for a follow-up. So, for that kind soul, here’s Any Major Funk Volume 2, which had me partying it down big time during its compilation. Get funky! 1. Bell & James – Living It Up (Friday Night) (1978)
2. Jimmy ‘Bo’ Horne – Dance Across The Floor (1978)
3. Central Line – Walking Into Sunshine (1981)
4. Oliver Cheatham – Get Down Saturday Night (1983)
5. Brenda & the Big Dudes – Weekend Special (1983)
6. The Whispers – And The Beat Goes On (1979)
7. Third World – Dancing On The Floor (Hooked On Love) (1981)
8. Patrice Rushen – Forget Me Nots (1982)
9. The Emotions – Best Of My Love (1978)
10. Sister Sledge – Thinking Of You (1979)
11. Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out (1980)
12. Chic – My Feet Keep Dancing (1979)
13. Kurtis Blow – The Breaks (long version) (1980)
14. Thelma Houston – Saturday Night (1978)
15. Level 42 – Starchild (1981)

GET IT!
(PW in comments)

More Any Major Funk
More Mix CD-Rs

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Before we launch into the second part of the Age of the Afro series, let me thank the kind people who commented so generously and positively on the first installment — and, indeed, everybody who posts comments. Any blogger, certainly the music writers, will agree that comments validate our efforts, and encourage us to carry on. So, on to the next lot of ’70s soul classics. Read more…