Rock the Boat, Hues Corporation (1974)

Before we begin, I'd like the record to show that I hold my grocery store responsible for the following post. I've mentioned before that it pipes baby boomer music into the shopping experience at all times, a practice I'm very much in favor of as it puts me in a good mood even when I'm not.

So earlier this week, a song that, regardless of when I hear it, always takes me back to a specific time and place had me movin' and groovin' while I was picking up the essentials. It's a song that some will probably judge me for including in the blog. It's a song that some say heralded the birth of disco by being the first radio hit in that genre. It's a song that was at the top of the charts during this coming week in 1974. It's Rock the Boat by Hues Corporation. And its calypso stylings never fail to make me happy.

My college boyfriend and I had just moved to the Washington D.C. area (specifically Tacoma Park, Maryland) to bag our first post-graduation jobs. Hahahahaha. For those of you who aren't baby boomers, just know that a zillion of us were dumped in the job market just as the economy went to hell in a handbasket and it took a while to actually get jobs where we could put our educations to good use. And neither of them were in Washington D.C., I assure you.

We were on our own, though, and feeling sort of adult-like. Watergate was in full flower and in just another month Nixon would slink out of office in disgrace. Music was definitely in a state of flux and going in directions not entirely pleasing. Rock the Boat was on the radio ALL THE TIME. There were other songs I associate with that period, but this one is steeped in it.

What was so great about this song? I may have just discovered at least part of the reason - the bass player was none other than James Jamerson! At first I didn't believe it, but Motown at that point had moved to L.A., and I'm seeing this reference everywhere, so let's just go with that for now. It certainly would explain a lot. Just another one of the many things he never got credit for while he was alive.


But the song really wasn't a disco song when it first came out. In 1973, it was just one cut on Hues Corporation's first R&B album Freedom for the Stallion. (The title song had previously been recorded by Lee Dorsey, and was written by the inimitable Allen Toussaint but it didn't get much traction.) Rock the Boat was released as a single early in 1974 to follow up Freedom for the Stallion, and then a funny thing happened. The dance clubs in New York City started playing it, people started demanding it and it stampeded up the charts - disco by association. 

Hues Corporation's song still brings happiness to the populace - here they are much, much later (in 2004), still shaking their tail feathers while the crowd undulates with delight. Probably a very rewarding feeling for a group that got its first taste of success as an uncredited funky soul group in the 1972 blaxploitation film Blacula.

Some Misunderstanding, Gene Clark (1974)

But I know if you sell your soul to brighten your role
You might be disappointed in the lights

This morning on NPR there was an interview with Adam Brent Houghtaling, the author of "This Will End in Tears: The Miserablist Guide to Music." Believing that it's completely acceptable to feel sadness and to inhabit it, accompanied by the healing assistance of music, Houghtaling has assembled an intriguing compendium of melancholy songs and the artists who brought them to us.

I looked at the book's table of contents on Amazon, and found it odd that twice in one week I was staring at the name Gene Clark, with a list of miserable songs that includes the startling Some Misunderstanding. The first time happened when a fellow music aficionado, Henry Scott-Irvine, posted a video on Facebook featuring Clark and the Textones' Carla Olson singing 1987's Gypsy Rider.

One of 13 children raised in Missouri and a former New Christy Minstrel - it's hard to imagine the time in our history when this sort of music resonated (Clark is at the far left in this) - Gene Clark left that "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" prepster scene when his world, like everyone else's, was upended by the arrival of the Beatles. The commercial folk scene's days were seriously numbered when the mop-topped Lads from Liverpool emerged on this side of the pond. 

Upon arrival in L.A., the harmonic convergence of Clark's talents with that of two other folk refugees, Jim (later Roger) McGuinn and David Crosby, led to the formation of the Byrds, with Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke soon following. Their first producer/manager Jim Dickson insisted that, rather than being mere Beatles mimics, they needed to set themselves slightly apart by injecting a more singer-songwriter ethos into the mix. This is what led to the plan in 1965 to electrify Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, using session musicians from The Wrecking Crew, an idea none of them took much pleasure in at first. Only McGuinn played his 12-string Rickenbacker.

I pretty much lost track of Clark when he departed the Byrds after an eventful but stormy two years - the lush harmonies they served up vocally and instrumentally bore no resemblance to how they got along under the pressures of the music business. At heart a singer-songwriter, he had absolutely no appetite for the band's infighting or for being an American rock and roll star on a par with the Beatles, which led to other problems, and he never found the niche that he could comfortably occupy while making the music that he loved.

Over the following 20 or so years Gene Clark turned out music as a solo artist and in collaboration with others that I am only just now discovering, some of it quite miserable but also beautiful. I found an ebook about him, Remembering Gene Clark, that is jam-packed with details of his story and the reminiscences of others, that is very interesting reading.

Unfortunately, his health and mental health became a shambles from multiple issues and worsened by drug and alcohol abuse that he could never overcome. He died in 1991 at the age of 46. As Chris Hillman said in John Einarson's "Mr. Tambourine Man: the Life and Legacy of the Byrds' Gene Clark," the business "... was not supposed to be for him. It killed him, it really killed him ... a sweet soul was just stomped on. It's a brutal place for many people, Hollywood. It really sees them coming."

Bad Time (To Be In Love), Grand Funk Railroad (1974)

Can I get a witness? Yeah!

Two bits of trivia for all y'all: First, 45 years ago today, the Beatles played Shea Stadium, the first-ever concert to be held in that type of venue, the original arena rock gig. Check out Ed Sullivan's elated smile while he's shaking hands with the lads as they took the stage - what a snapshot of history this 1:58 of video is! 

Tickets sold like hotcakes, of course, which in those days meant in 80 days!  But 6 years later, another group broke the Beatles' record for attendance and revenue generation at a Shea Stadium concert that sold out in 72 hours, and their Shea record has never been broken, nor ever will be.  The group: Grand Funk Railroad. 

Who knew? Grand Funk was, to me, the quintessential high-energy garage band of the early 70s. They hadn't crossed my mind for decades, probably, until a week or so ago when I was listening to a Jayhawks song on an old compilation CD I found.  It was Bad Time, and it elicited a flood of memories. For the life of me I couldn't remember who had sung the original power ballad at first, but I knew I'd always belted it out whenever I heard that first killer verse. And of course, the person I was belting it out with was Mark Farner, he of the open - or no - shirt and beautiful voice. (He has been called "a great communicator" by one of his protégés, Peter Frampton.)

As a live act, they had no peer in the minds of many (see this testimonial about the Shea concert from one who probably represents the consensus on this topic), and their music carried what is generally thought to have been a positive message. Read any interview with Mark Farner, old or new, and it's clear he always intended to be a change agent in society, not just a frontman, by encouraging young people to recognize their power and influence, albeit not violently.  It appears a lot of that ethos was misunderstood by The Establishment, and they were often marginalized and feared, including by the suits who ran American radio, even as the fans were welcoming them with open arms.

The group formed in blue collar Flint, Michigan, and its original members were Farner, drummer Don Brewer and Mel Schacher, who had played bass for Question Mark and the Mysterians. They had a publicity-savvy producer/manager in the early days, and after a rollicking show at the Atlanta International Pop Festival in 1969, were signed by Capitol Records (the Beatles' U.S. label). 

They achieved a meaningful chart position the next year with I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home. In 1972, they became a four-part band with the addition of a keyboardist, Craig Frost.  Their attempt to lure Peter Frampton for that fourth position failed due to his other contractual obligations. Frampton was well known to them; his earlier band Humble Pie had been a regular opening act for Grand Funk, including at Shea, and Frampton has credited the two bands' association with Humble Pie's ability to gain traction with audiences on both sides of the pond. 

Not until Todd Rundgren became their producer did they see a true hit, with 1973's We're An American Band, followed by The Loco-Motion, the Little Eva number written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

I hadn't realized how interesting their story was, frankly; I've been reading stuff all afternoon, and I could write a lot more. Unfortunately, this is another bad break-up story, where the original members of the group fight in court over the right to use the group name after a split.  But they had a very good ride indeed.

Lookin' for a Love, Bobby Womack (1974)

I'm lookin' here and there ... I'm searchin' everywhere ... and I'm lookin' ... I'm lookin' ... I'm lookin' ... I'm lookin' ...

I have been trying valiantly to identify one song from 1974 - any song - that I could say I really liked. Something was in the water that year and nothing at all from the playlists looks good to me.

I had only to look locally - Bobby Womack's interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air a week ago reminded me of the seductive gospelesque rhythms and vocals of Lookin' for A Love which, as luck would have it, was released in 1974! The Womack family was from Cleveland and caught the eye of Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers when the brothers were singing gospel in church under the watchful eye of their father.

Lookin' for a Love was originally released in 1962 by the brothers, who by that time were named the Valentinos, recording for Cooke's label and touring with James Brown. (The song was also recorded and released by the J Geils Band before Womack re-released it in 1974, a version completely devoid of soul.)

When Womack was 15, he and his sister-in-law Shirley wrote and the Valentinos recorded It's All Over Now, later to be covered by the Rolling Stones in a much more well known version that launched their career. In his interview with Gross, he makes no secret of his disdain for the fact that, in those days, it generally took white recording artists to ignite the creative output of black artists as far as the commercial marketplace was concerned.

So when informed that the Stones were interested in recording the song, having heard an advance copy, he described his reaction: they should "get their own song." He came to be convinced, by Cooke himself, that allowing the cover to go forward - and beat his version to the charts - would be a good career move from a royalty perspective. He still emphasizes in the interview, however, that "Mick Jagger can't out-sing me!". Tell it, Bobby!

The left-handed Womack's many talents include playing guitar upside down, and the wah-wah line in Sly & the Family Stone's It's A Family Affair is his. I realize that I don't know as much about this multi-talented artist as I should; the fact that Cooke hand-picked him to play guitar in his band and for all intents and purposes made Womack his protege until his violent death in 1964 was all new to me. I'm going to check out the recent CD compilation, The Best of Bobby Womack: The Soul Years, to see what I've missed.