More swing than Western

My introduction to Western swing music...

...came about when, in desperation, I took out an Asleep at the Wheel album from my local record library; there being nothing else even vaguely interesting available that day.

This set me off on a journey of discovery and eventually led me to some of my favourite music of any type or era.

But, what is Western swing?

Now, this is where it gets tricky. It's essentially a combination of blues, jazz, cowboy and old time music performed on string band instruments for dancing, often led by the fiddle. In the form that I find most appealing, it's swing jazz played with multiple electric instruments - guitar, steel guitar and, on occasion, mandolin - playing lines that you'd more usually expect to come from a horn section. To be more specific, it's the music that Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys were playing in the post war years 1946 and 1947.

At that time, the genre was on the decline and wartime measures to raise taxes had had an impact on venues. Clubs and ballrooms had a 30% levy imposed if they allowed dancing and, although this was eventually reduced to 20%, its negative effect on all forms of dance music and touring bands was severe.

However, as the biggest act in Western Swing, Wills' band continued to be very popular and sell records very steadily, although he'd cut down the size of the band, losing most of his horn players. Following a move to California, Wills signed a deal with the Tiffany Music Company to produce a series of transcription discs which would be sent to radio stations throughout the US. Some 458 tracks were cut, 360 of which were complete takes. The sessions took place during the band's down time and, by all accounts, were very good natured and relaxed affairs. The band featured, at various times and in various combinations, guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Junior Barnard, steel players Noel Boggs, Ray Honeycut and Herb Remington, and Tiny Moore on electric mandolin. It was these players who, along with the fiddles, made up the band's "horn section" and gave it its distinctive full and driving sound and its harmonised ensemble lines, as well as most of the improvised solos. Furthermore, it gave the band a wider range of tunes which allowed them to blow more freely than they otherwise might have done. Bob seems to be having a great time, urging the players on and laughing at the electric gymnastics.

Unfortunately, the project ended up a relative failure, with only a small number of radio stations ordering the discs. Tommy Duncan - Wills' vocalist and a big draw - quit the band. Wills' manager advised against issuing any more transcriptions as it was giving Duncan - now a rival act - too much publicity. Cliff Sundin and Clifton Johnsen (aka Cactus Jack) - the Tiffany Music Company's bosses - started to fall out over what Sundlin perceived as CJ's crooked dealings. One particular salesman with a drink problem started to go rogue and make deals that the company couldn't deliver on, as well as claim fake expenses. The two label bosses parted company leaving the concern in the hands of Sundin and Wills, the latter of whom had his own issues with drink. Attempts to revive the transcriptions project and release the material by Sundin came to nothing and, by the end of the decade, the recordings were locked away in Sundin's basement.

Inevitably, the transcription discs fell into collectors' hands and a trade in bootlegged recordings sprang up, until 10 LPs of the recordings were issued by the Kaleidoscope Records label over the course of several years, starting in 1982. Further compilations of unissued Tiffany recordings followed, although as far as I know there are still some tracks remaining in the vault.

So what about the music?

In the comments you'll find the link to a Hole-exclusive compilation of Tiffany tracks - 20 in all, and chosen to illustrate the jazzier side of the whole Kaleidoscope ten album set. They're also all instrumental, apart from a couple of tracks, and feature very hot solos on electric guitar, steel guitar, electric mandolin, as well as piano and fiddle.

Notable soloists include Herb Remington on steel, Junior Barnard on (distorted) electric guitar channeling Charlie Christian and Tiny Moore on 5 string solid electric mandolin.

If you thought that Western Swing was variations on San Antonio Rose, maudlin ballads and hokey old time square dance tunes, think again. This is some really ballsy stuff and it swings - as the late Alexis Korner would have put it - like a bitch. Indeed, although the material is a million miles away, nothing using electric instruments achieved quite such an intensity until the rise of the electric guitar in the mid to late 1960s. Yes, it really is that powerful at times, and it's music that's meant to be played LOUD!

Need a smile putting on your face?

Play this sucker!

Say "Hi" to High Pulp

There seem to be quite a few bands around at the moment...

...flirting with jazz and rock, and with an approach suited to the larger ensemble. Snarky Puppy is probably the prime example, and if you've missed them, you've missed a real treat.

Anyway, here's one of the very latest bands of this sort to emerge - High Pulp. 

Hailing from the US West Coast, they've adopted an organic approach to music. Organic in that none of the members actually intended to end up in a band playing jazz, but jazz is essentially what they ended up playing, with the result being a melange of each member's view of that genre. However, there's a lot more to the band than jazz.

They're releasing their third album in July, and this is their second - last year's Pursuit of Ends.

Led by drummer Bobby Granfelt, the band reveals an array of influences on the album, including Sun Ra, early 1970s Miles, more than a touch of Weather Report, and hip hop (mainly down to Granfelt's superb drumming) without compromising on groove and ambience. Along the way, there are hints of psychedelia, electronica, and world music. The horn arrangements are excellent, with the opening of  A Ring on Each Finger especially impressive, as the horns almost seem to chime.

It's very "widescreen" music, with lots of atmospheric synth pads making up an expansive backdrop for the melodies and solos. Occasionally, there's the odd shock - including snatches of Coltrane-style sax and otherworldly discordant harmonies.

What's most satisfying about it is that it constantly surprises - it never settles for too long into any one groove. Something usually comes along to disrupt proceedings - a series of sampled synth stabs, almost sequence-like horn riffing, a new little chord pattern, or a low piano part suddenly appearing in the mix from nowhere.

Here's the band with a live version of the second track, All Roads Lead to Los Angeles.

So, a little jazz, hip hop and electronica all brought together and presented in a form that has a wider appeal, due to its intention to generally rock and groove.

A band to watch...

Ollie Halsall - The Man

Meet Ollie Halsall...

OK, a lot of people may not have heard of him, but a lot of people have certainly heard him  on the early Rutles recordings, and possibly even seen him in the Rutles movie, in which he played Leppo, the fifth Rutle who disappeared. On the recordings, Halsall handles the "Paul" vocals - slightly speeded up - as well as all the lead guitar work.

No matter how significant Ollie’s part in the Rutles was, there’s far more to him than this, however.

Emerging in the early 1960s as the self taught vibes player in a band called Timebox with singer Mike Patto at the helm, Ollie taught himself to play guitar whilst with Timebox and when the band morphed into the sublime Patto, he was ready to play some of the most amazing guitar you’ll ever hear - and all this by 1970, too. He was also a bloody good pianist.

No-one in rock before him had ever played guitar like Ollie.

Absolutely no-one.

His playing was defined by long winding legato runs given an amazing fluency by his use of hammer-ons and pull-offs and all within musical structures which owed little to blues and more to jazz and even, dare I say, fusion.

Ollie’s late-blooming prowess on guitar influenced a young Alan Holdsworth when the two met in John Hiseman’s Tempest after Patto split up. Holdsworth’s refinement of Halsall’s legato runs in turn, influenced a certain young chap called Edward Van Halen who wrote a whole new chapter of what became known as "shred" guitar. Listen to the late Eddie’s playing and you can hear Halsall in there as clear as day.

Make no mistake, Ollie was an unknown but highly innovative player whose explorations of long fluid runs mark him as one of the key figures in the development of modern rock guitar.

His recorded legacy is patchy, to say the least. Like virtually all great lead guitarists, his major work was as a backing musician – not as the featured player. Consequently, we have a handful of Patto releases, collaborations with people like Kevin Ayres, Viv Stanshall, Neil Innes and John Cale, albums with his later band Boxer when he was united with Mike Patto, and various other recordings – many made in Spain during one of Ollie’s lengthy stays abroad.

I can whole-heartedly recommend the Patto studio releases – all of which feature plenty of very dense and intense playing. To be honest, it’s not always easy listening due to its sheer mass in terms of notes per second and occasional rather freeform vibe. My favourite Ollie track is ‘Loud Green Song’ from a bootleg of BBC radio sessions where he shows what he could do with his style in a straightforward rock setting.

Unfortunately, Ollie’s life story wasn’t a particularly happy one. Dead from a heroin overdose in 1992 aged just 43, Ollie enjoyed getting regularly wrecked on anything he could get his hands on. Even the rest of Patto – his most musically rewarding association – seem to have shared his bad luck, with Mike Patto dying of cancer, bassist Clive Jenkins, suffering from severe brain damage in a car crash and eventually dying, and drummer John Halsey physically disabled – from the same accident as Jenkins.

Sure, listen to Ollie and you’ll hear lots of qualities and characteristics that marked early shred and fusion guitar and which now seem hackneyed, but then think when he was first playing like this – in 1970.

"Ollie may not have been the best guitarist in the world, but he was certainly among the top two.” - John Halsey.

File under "guitar genius".

Not getting Nilsson

Nilsson...one of a number of people I don't "get".

Not that I rule it out at some future date.

I never thought I'd "get" Prince, or Tom Waits, or The Residents, but I do now.

Although I've never been a Nilsson fan, there's one track of his which I've loved to pieces ever since I heard it way back in 1971 - probably courtesy of John Peel.

It's this...

Taken from his best selling album "Nilsson Schmilsson", "Jump into the Fire" is a superb 7 minute wig-out comprising very loose riffing over a single chord. Its main feature is the bass line, played by ace UK session player, Herbie Flowers. Google him - he's certainly been around! During the song, he gradually detunes his bass until it's so low it's hardly audible, and then he gradually brings it back to pitch. The other musicians include Jim Gordon on drums, Chris Spedding, John Uribe and Klaus Voorman on guitars, and Jimmy Webb (yes, that Jimmy Webb!) on piano. Nilsson's voice has some heavy delay applied to it throughout, giving it an almost dub vibe, and he seems to be channeling "Abbey Road" era McCartney. Think "Oh! Darling". 

In a strange way, the track's overall groove is very like "Fur Immur" from the "NEU!2" album, with its Motorik rhythm. One of the guitars even sounds like Michael Rother. Nilsson's recording predates NEU's by a couple of years, but I doubt there's any influence at work, although there's an intriguing and striking similarity there.

Anyway, revisiting the track in an idle moment last week offered me the opportunity of seeing if I now "get" Nilsson, and what better way to start than with his best known and most successful album?

The opening track - "Gotta Get Up" - is a solid uptempo pop song that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Monkees album a few years earlier. Nilsson wrote for the band, of course.

Next, another pop ditty called "Driving Along" which reminds me of the Beatles' "Glass Onion", particularly in its use of horns, hand claps and acoustic guitar. 

The third track is a Louis Jordan blues - "Early in the Morning". It's just a vocal and an electric piano. It's so ineffectual that I can't find anything much to say about it. Ah, I know...it's mercifully short.

Track four is "The Moonbeam Song". Again, rather Beatlish in sound, it's a gentle ballad with lots of harmonies and mellotrons towards the end. It reminds me a bit of "Across the Universe".

"Down" ends side one and again I'm forced to think "Beatles" with this slow to medium paced McCartney style rocker, with suitably crazed vocals.

Hmm...I'm not "getting" Harry at all so far.

What about side le deux?

The opening track is the song that Nilsson first thought was written by Lennon and McCartney, as well as being the song that (almost) everyone thinks was written by Nilsson. It was in fact written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger. "Without You" was at first envisaged as having a simple solo piano and vocal arrangement, but that idea soon went out of the window and it got the full (and very overwrought) bells and whistles treatment, and became a #1 hit practically everywhere.  

Things ended very badly indeed for Ham and Evans, who both committed suicide after royalties disputes. The full story is extremely sad and painful to hear.

 

"Coconut" follows - a novelty song consisting of one chord played over four minutes and a cod West Indian vocal. It seems longer than four minutes - a lot longer.

Track three of side two is a cover of Shirley & Lee's "Let the Good Times Roll" - for what appears to be no good reason at all. It features a rather poor harmonica solo by Nilsson. A great song, yes - but why is it here?

"Jump into the Fire" next and although it's totally at odds with the uneven, although often rather Beatlish, mood of the rest of the tracks, it's definitely the stand out song so far, and there's only one more cut to go.

The album closer is almost  Beach Boys'ish. with an orchestral arrangement not a million miles away from "Smile" era Brian Wilson, complete with a plucked banjo in there. It's OK. "I'll Never Leave You"...is that a threat or a promise?

So, have I "got" Nilsson now?

Nah - not even hardly.

The whole album sounds like something that might have been cobbled together for a posthumous release, with rejected tracks, demos and just the odd song (one in this case) worth saving. It's his best selling album which includes his best selling single, but it's a tepid affair, to say the least.

(As ever, only my opinion - feel free to differ.)

So, a one track album...but what a track!

A different take on Steely Dan

Today's platter of choice...

...is an album of Steely Dan songs sung by two Swedish women with minimal accompaniment – mostly piano.

It’s this:

It’s called ‘Fire in the Hole’ and it’s by Sara Isaksson and Rebecka Törnqvist – although they don’t look like the cover seems to suggest they do.

Here they are:

That’s better, isn’t it?

Here’s the Dan songs they cover:

• Rose Darling
• Barrytown
• Gaucho
• Green Earrings
• Your Gold Teeth
• Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me)
• Don’t Take Me Alive
• Josie
• Do It Again
• Fire In The Hole
• Pearl Of The Quarter
• Midnite Cruiser

What surprised me was that if someone asked me to list a dozen Dan songs I’d like to hear covers of, very few of the above would have made it to my list.

However, Isaksson and Törnqvist make the songs their own, and, with minimal accompaniment, the songs are stripped down to the essentials – melody, harmonies and chord changes – and then sung in such a way that each one becomes a small jewel of dazzlingly radiant beauty, that keeps the best of each composition and then allows you to look at it in a slightly different way.

They’ve made me aware of subtleties in songs that I very often skip through when listening to the original albums on which the tunes appeared. I just know that I revisit the Dan versions with fresh ears now.

Their voices are simultaneously plaintive, vulnerable and sensuous but with an inner strength that supports a format of basically two female voices and an acoustic piano.

Yes, there are other instruments – occasionally you’ll hear a mandolin, a sax, a clarinet, an acoustic guitar, a synth, an electric piano or a kick drum – but it’s basically kept very simple and these other instruments just used for texture and seasoning.

Even the voices reinforce this simplicity, with solo and unison singing used when appropriate, and so the glorious harmony sections are made to really stand out .

Some of the instrumental lines – such as the guitar figure in ‘Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me)’ – get sung in a vaguely ‘scat’ way, although what could have been a ‘jazz’ album gets elevated to a sort of a melodic purity by dint of the clarity of the singing and an overriding urge to display the inner lyricism of the tunes.

Hell, if you don't like the Dan, you might just like this, with almost everything stripped away except the melody and harmonies.

It’s an absolutely fantastic piece of work.

Fred "Sonic" Smith's Rendezvous Band

There you are in the studio.

You've recorded both sides of your first single.

However, you only have enough money to afford to mix the A side.

What are you going to do?

You decide to put the same track on the B side, of course! 

Not wishing to shortchange your fans, you make one side stereo and the other mono.

Except you don't. 

It's the same track - in mono - on both sides.

And so it was with Fred "Sonic" Smith (and his Rendezvous Band) with his first recorded release since a sickly MC5 imploded in 1972 - "City Slang", which ran for an unfashionable five minutes plus. 

In fact, this was the last official recording Smith would make for 14 years, and the only band he'd lead. Sonic's Rendezvous Band broke up in 1980, the year he married Patti Smith, and his musical efforts and energies were concentrated on her from then on; playing on, writing for and producing her 1986 album "Dream of Life" - his last major project. Smith died in 1994 of heart failure. 

Sonic's Rendezvous Band - SRB from now on! - comprised Fred on guitar and vocals, along with Scott Morgan on guitar and vocals, Gary Rasmussen on bass and Scott Asheton on drums. It was an interesting mix of talent, fostered by four major Detroit bands, and revealing their influences which drew from punk, soul, rock & roll, hard rock and even some late 1960s West Coast stylings. 

Fortunately, although the official output of SRB is basically one side of a single, there's quite a lot of live bootlegs - some of it good to very good quality, so it's here we have to go to understand what made the band so special.

So, what can we take away from these recordings?

First and foremost, Fred's snotty attitude - reflected in his vocals. Not a good voice in the conventional sense of the word, but full of passion that sometimes sneers at and harangues the listener. Then there's the superb guitar playing - razor sharp rhythm and a lead style that owes much to Chuck Berry as well as more modern rock guitar influences, and which combined seamlessly when he played a solo. Sometimes, he'd stretch out, as exemplified by the instrumental "China Fields" with its guitar interplay - a furrow further ploughed by Television a few years later.

The rest of the band spurred Smith on, with sympathetic guitar support from Morgan, and Rasmussen and Asheton's granite bedrock which kept the band anchored for the guitars and vocals to roar over.  

One thing the band wasn't was punk. OK, there were clearly punk influences, but an SRB set song was likely to contain extended guitar solos and stray into hard rock, as in this live track...  

Then there's the eclectic nature of SRB's set lists which can be found buried in the mess and mass of unofficial live material. There's a 10 minute slow blues, a 16 minute psychedelic raga jam (with improvised vocals and an extended sax solo from Smith!). covers of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", Huey Piano Smith's "Roberta", Ray Charles' "I Believe to my Soul", quite a few Chuck Berry songs and a couple from the Stones - "Flight 505" and "Heart of Stone".

Although we're lucky to have live recordings from SRB, they've been compiled, recompiled and released so often that there's often duplication, and some of the album's track lists are taken from various gigs, and so lack cohesion. Attempts have been made to rationalise the existing recordings, but without some sort of effective copyright control - which is absent, as is the case with bootlegs - they've just been bootlegged to create more albums. 

To sum up, here's that A side again - "City Slang" - sometimes described as the greatest rock & roll single ever. Perhaps...perhaps not, but it's hard to argue with this description and summary of the band:

"5:15 of assault guitars, railroad drumming and Smith's determined-rebel call - has all you need to know why SRB were masters of their domain."

 

Some prime SRB up for grabs as soon as I decide what to pick out from their messy back catalogue!

Pugwash ahoy!

Those of you from the UK...

...might recall Captain Pugwash. He was a bumbling pirate captain in a BBC children's animation series.  

Somehow, an urban myth arose claiming that there were characters in the series called "Seaman Stains" and "Master Bates", but this was false and eventually creator John Ryan took legal action....

In 1991, the Pugwash cartoonist John Ryan successfully sued the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian newspapers for inaccurately claiming that some Pugwash character names were double entendres. The claim may have originated in student rag mags  from the 1970s.

Amazingly, Captain Pugwash had a very long life - starting out in black and white, as live action cardboard cut outs, in 1957 and continuing into the first couple of years of the next millennium in colour, using traditional animation. In 2017, there were even plans for a live action reboot, but this came to nothing.

But let's drop the "Captain" and say hello to just plain "Pugwash" instead. 

Pugwash was a band that started off in the imagination of Irishman Thomas Walsh. He'd received a substantial compensation award, following a childhood accident, and eventually decided to turn his parents' garden shed into a recording studio - broadly following the example of XTC's Andy Partridge. So, starting in the early 1990s, Walsh adopted the moniker "Pugwash" and started recording demos - dozens and dozens and dozens of them. In 1995, one of these was named "Demo of the Year" by top Irish music magazine Hot Press. By some tortuous route, this attracted the attention of the legendary Kim Fowley, who then recruited Walsh to sing and play guitar for him.

 

Eventually, Walsh formed a band - "Pugwash" - and recorded an album Almond Tea, which gained high praise from Hot Press and set Walsh and his band  mates on an 18 year career that saw a lot of critical success and the establishment of a very loyal fan base, but failed to break the band commercially. The line up of the band changed over the years until Walsh was left as the sole member for the last album, Silverlake.

Over that whole period, people such as Andy Partridge and Dave Gregory of XTC, Jason Falkner of Jellyfish, Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, Michael Penn, Ben Folds, and Brian Wilson collaborator Nelson Bragg became involved with Walsh and the band in various ways, including production, arrangement, performance and composition.

Jason Falkner and Thomas Walsh

Hell, even Brian Wilson was a fan!

“Back in 2006 Brian Wilson’s manager David Leaf obtained my e-mail through an acquaintance and sent me a mail saying that Brian loved my track ‘It’s Nice to Be Nice’ and as he was coming to Dublin to play in Vicar Street he’d love to meet me. MEET ME!!?? He came, I met Brian, he said ‘Hey! You’re the nice to be nice guy.’ I said, ‘Yes’ and he said, ‘Great song’…..I still think it was all a fantastic dream to be honest”.

But what of the music itself?

It's convenient to describe it as power pop, and it has many of its influences - the Beatles, ELO, XTC, the Kinks, Jellyfish, the Beach Boys, and Honeybus, to name just a few. There's some jangle in there, as well as gorgeous sweeping harmonies and melodies that are so catchy that you'd swear you'd heard them before. It's certainly not soft rock - sometimes the music is quite muscular and it's not afraid to show it. The production is often very punchy, which lends even the gentler songs a certain strength. 

Not that the music is formulaic, either, or too hung up on its obvious influences. There's enough originality in Walsh's songs and the arrangements to ensure that they stand up to scrutiny on their own terms. 

To take one example, the song that Brian Wilson loved, It's Nice to be Nice, is a perfect pop song, with the melody well to the fore, but there's all sorts of extra little touches - the banjo arpeggios, the tick-tack bass, the mellotron swells and the guitar lines that embroider the arrangement but don't detract from its directness. Individually, you've heard all this stuff before, but now it's all together in one place and it works. Lyrically a little gauche, perhaps, but the sentiment suits the upbeat feel of the song.

Apart from Pugwash, Walsh had another band which was with Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy - The Duckworth Lewis-Stern Method - who recorded two albums with cricket-based lyrics. In spite of such a venture appearing rather niche, the albums sold well and Walsh actually made money from it - money which had been in short supply with Pugwash, but which was quickly spent on a coke habit and booze. Fortunately, Walsh got clean and sober after a two week hospitalisation following a major health scare and then a spell in rehab.

Walsh and Hannon

Walsh seems to have adopted a rather low profile of late, with just the very occasional gig, although his Patreon page offers regular pay-per-view live sets.

I wish I could be more optimistic about Walsh's future, but unless power pop has some sort of miraculous and massive flowering of popularity, his music is never going to be anything but a happy memory of the power of a good melody well-presented, but ultimately leading nowhere.

If pushed, I'd have to say that my favourite music of all is a well-played pop song. Pugwash is one of the finest examples of how it's not yet a lost art.

Remember, it's nice to be nice...