Dial 'GW' for Geraint Watkins

Koen's last screed featuring Chuck Berry threw up a couple of votes for "Promised Land" as Chuck's best song. 

To judge by the number of covers, many musicians agree - the Band, the Grateful Dead (they played it live 425 times from 1971 to 1995!), Johnny Rivers, Meatloaf, and several dozen more. One of the more interesting covers appeared in 1971 when Johnny Allan and the Krazy Kats released a Cajun interpretation of it, complete with accordion. 

Chuck Berry fan Dave Edmunds (better known in the US for his time in Rockpile) also cut a version in 1972 for his first solo album "Rockpile" - hence the later band name when he teamed up with Nick Lowe, Billy Bremner and Terry Williams. His first stab at the song adopted a pretty standard approach with guitar, bass and drums and lots of Berry-style guitar soloing from Edmunds. He obviously had a lot of love for the song as Rockpile went on to include it in their live sets.

Somewhere along the way after that, Edmunds started playing the song with a Cajun feel a la Johnny Adams, and the clip below shows him in 1998 fronting an all star band playing a storming version of it. (Full show here - and it's a corker!)

As well as Edmunds, that particular band included Henry Spinetti on drums, Andy Fairweather Lowe and Mickey Gee (a superb player and, sadly, no longer with us) on guitars, Pino Palladino on bass and one Geraint Watkins on accordion and keyboard.

Geraint who?

Well, for saying he's played and/or recorded with Clapton, the Stray Cats, Carl Perkins, Status Quo, Dr Feelgood, Rory Gallagher, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Ronnie Lane, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Mark Knopfler, John Martyn, Gerry Rafferty, Paul McCartney, Van Morrison, Bill Wyman and many others, it's surprising that he's not better known. 

No less a musical giant than Bob Dylan - on his Theme Time Radio Hour - once played a couple of his tracks and described Watkins as his "favourite English piano player". Watkins is Welsh, of course, but never mind...that's high praise indeed!

Add to that the fact that he's released several very fine solo albums of his own, that sank without trace, and you end up with one more rock stalwart who's never been or is ever likely to be famous in their own right, but is highly respected by fellow musicians and fans, works steadily and makes a relatively anonymous but significant contribution to this music stuff that we all love. 

Initially emerging in the very early UK Pub Rock scene, Watkins started making a name for himself when he moved from Wales to London. He got lots of session work and ended up in Micky Jupp's band for the 'Be Stiff Route 78' tour. This must have sparked off an interest in forming a band of his own and a few years later he was one of the founding members of the much-missed Balham Alligators.

The Alligators played a heady mix of Cajun, country, swing, R&B, R&R, blues, swamp pop and folk, with Watkins featured most prominently. Unfortunately, the members didn't get on particularly well with each other and their gigs were sometimes marred by arguments such as which song to play next. Watkins commented much later:

“On a good night we were unbeatable, we’d pull the house down, on a bad night we’d be utterly terrible. There didn’t seem to be anything in-between. Great or awful.”

Fortunately, it's the former here...

They were what you might call "a good time band" and became such a huge draw in pubs and small venues that even after they'd broken up they got flooded with booking requests, so the band reformed with Watkins to the fore again and carried on for a while longer. 

As mentioned above, Watkins has a solo career, with several albums released slowly but steadily over the years. His first was as leader of his band called Geraint Watkins and the Dominators, who were soon poached by producer Stuart Colman to back Shakin' Stevens in the studio and on the road, which put Watkins' solo ambitions on hold, but at least paid the rent.

The album was produced by Andy Fairweather Lowe in 1979 and pretty much serves as a smorgasbord of various American R&B stylings with nods to Fats Domino, early Elvis, and Little Richard, although a couple of tracks sound very Little Feats-ish to me, and there's also some tracks that Rockpile fans will enjoy. Unfortunately, there's no accordion from Watkins - he can really ignite a song with it, as he proved with the Alligators -  but it's still a fine album that's recently had its first outing on CD, after over 40 years languishing on ropy vinyl copies and as sub-par mp3s. 

Here's Andy Fairweather Lowe talking about how the album came to be recorded, with a few anecdotes about Watkins which are well worth hearing.

The re-release has some session outtakes as well as a few tracks recorded with Glyn Johns. The latter reveal a more poppy side to Watkins, including a rather Spectorish song. some blues and even a stab at straight rock with Fairweather Lowe on lead vocals. On the whole, it's pretty disposable bonus material, but it's good to have the original album in good quality sound at last.

His later albums are all worth exploring and see him covering an even wider range of material, and in increasingly diverse styles, as in this 2004 recording which reveals what happens when Nina Simone meets some Heroes and Villains...

Or perhaps you'd prefer a 2022 video of early Duke Ellington meeting Johnny B Goode?

Watkins' Facebook and YouTube pages are well worth exploring and contain several videos of his fez-wearing trio "The Feztones" - which is just Watkins greenscreened. He explains that fezzes are expensive, so he bought four of them in a two for the price of one deal, and now has a spare... 

Just answer the laughably easy question in the comments below to hear more from this largely unknown but hugely talented musician...