Nobody But Me, Human Beinz (1967)

Nobody can do the Shingaling like I do, nobody can do the Skate like I do, nobody can do the Boogaloo like I do, nobody can do the Philly like I do ... 

One of the many kicks of having this blog is discovering that songs I figured were original were actually cover versions. Sometimes a cover is a reasonably faithful interpretation of its predecessor; other times it's barely recognizable, so unique is the new incarnation.

The latter scenario applies to the Human Beinz' Nobody But Me, which tonight enjoyed massive exposure to new audiences kicking off the new season of The Office. Unbeknownst to me, until my friend Chuck pointed it out to me this morning, Nobody But Me was a cover of an Isley Brothers song.  To say that it was changed up a good bit by the moptop quartet from Youngstown, Ohio, would be an understatement.

A prime example of garage rock at its most exuberant and ferocious (unlike the weak original), the song repeats the word 'no' or 'nobody' more times in 2:16 than I care to count, working anyone who comes within earshot of its driving arrangement into a frenzy. They were apparently wildly popular in their neck of the woods, playing to enthusiastic crowds virtually every night of the week (or so they say on their official website). With that sort of frequency it was only a matter of time before a record label was tipped off to them. And so they were signed to Capitol Records, had the top 10 hit, and then performed and toured as a group for another several years before breaking up.

Rhythm guitarist Ting Markulin says that Nobody But Me was originally seven minutes long, with a lengthy jam in the middle that was cut, naturally, to conform to the two-minute rule that governed radio airplay in those days.  It's hard to imagine rocking out that hard for that length of time to just one song - the existing version has enough mojo as it is.  If you're interested in a deconstruction of the song, Markulin provides an in-depth look at how it saw the light of day on their site. 

I have no further associations of them beyond this song, but it turns out they had a larger repertoire, not all of it as down and dirty as Nobody But Me. YouTube has a lot of examples of their songs - check them out!  

Say These Words of Love, Temptones (1967)

I hope that someday I can figure out how to have a chat with Daryl Hall.  Because that man has stories I want to hear about spending quality time with the Temptations, and in particular, my obsession Paul Williams.

For decades, I have wondered about the 1985 recording of Live at the Apollo, a performance by Hall, John Oates, Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin, long after the latter two had left the Temptations. Daryl Hall has a phenomenal voice and this particular recording had some killer stuff on it. There was a time when I played it right into the ground.  But I never really understood what the connection was between the two duos, if there was any at all. 

So there I was listening to all the great soul music on my George McGregor and the Bronzettes station on Pandora last week when what popped up but a total obscurity called Say These Words of Love by the Temptones. And guess who the Temptones were?  Daryl Hall's early Philly-based, entirely white, band, that's who.

Research Mode ensued.  And what a story it is.  I wish it were my story.

Daryl Hall grew up in a predominantly black community outside of Philadelphia that was vibrant with a veritable melange of musical influences. He moved to Philly proper when he was a student at Temple University and started hanging in the same scene that included the nucleus of people who became the architects of the Sound of Philadelphia - Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, Thom Bell, the Delfonics, and the Stylistics. The Temptones was the group he formed with several other Temple students. Initially an a cappella quartet, they soon got a rhythm section, left doo-wop behind and moved into straight soul, with Hall as lead singer.    

The gigs the Temptones played were often in front of largely black audiences, which reportedly were stunned at the soul sound these white guys were capable of producing. They performed at soul spectaculars, blew other groups out of the water, and ended up with the chance to appear at the Uptown Theatre - which was to Philly what the Apollo was to New York - in a talent show sponsored by James Brown.  (They took 2nd place, ahead of the Delfonics.) It was there that Daryl Hall met his idols, the Temptations.

The Tempts were impressed with the Temptones - a rendition of their Farewell My Love (a pre-Ruffin ballad when Paul Williams was still co-lead singing with Eddie Kendricks) was particularly well received - and from what I've been able to dig up, Williams mentored them, even arranging an audition with Smokey Robinson.

Though dreams of Motown were not to be, a record deal with another label did follow, and they released a few singles, including Say These Words of Love, accompanied by many of the session musicians that would later back the O'Jays, Jerry Butler and the Spinners as the Sound of Philadelphia became a force to be reckoned with.  However, when two of the members got drafted to go to Vietnam, they called it quits. Daryl Hall had already met John Oates out and about, and the rest is history. 

So you can see why I want to have an audience with Hall - to learn more about his knowledge of Temptations history would send me reeling for a month, I'm sure. The story of the lifelong friendship of Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks has not been properly told - hell, it hasn't been told at all - and I believe I am the one who is destined to tell it.

Tramp, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas (1967)

You know, Otis, I don't care what you say, you're still a tramp.  ... WHAT!?!?

One of the funkiest duets of the 60s was an unabashedly rural song that always seemed really out of its element but somehow caught on and became not only a hit but a classic. It was called Tramp, and was sung in inimitable trash talk by the charismatic Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. 

Stax co-founder Jim Stewart had the brainstorm to pair up the label's male and female pride and joy, as Motown was doing with Marvin Gaye and various girl singers, on an album of what was, in essence, covers. According to Soulsville, USA: the Story of Stax Records, by Rob Bowman, neither was too keen at first on dueting, but found they enjoyed it; Tramp was the first song they laid down, a suggestion by Redding, who encouraged Thomas to call him every name she could think of.  

Stax house drummer Al Jackson Jr. sets the table for Otis, Carla, Booker T. and the MGs, and the dy-no-mite Memphis Horns in this irresistible ditty.  The two ooze sass and strut their stuff like there ain't no tomorrow - it's a ridiculous song in every way but there's nothing not to love about it. The first time I deejayed my local Dance Dance Party Party group here in Akron, it was on the playlist from the outset. 

However, their version was not the original.  Tramp was originally recorded in 1966 by Lowell Fulson (and co-written with pianist Jimmy McCracklin). Born on an Oklahoma Indian reservation, Fulson migrated to Texas where he began to emulate guitarists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson, which helped him become a sideman to traveling singer Texas Alexander. He landed in California where, with T-Bone Walker, he became known as the founder of modern California blues.

As a solo piece Tramp had an entirely different feel.  It was more of a showpiece for Fulson's guitar licks. Although this was released just a few months prior to Otis and Carla's and did almost as well on the charts as the duet, I never heard it.

But the Tramp fixation continued one more time that year - it was also recorded by Roy Head and Johnny Winter, of all people, with Head's band the Traits. Before he was discovered by Mike Bloomfield, Winter often served as an uncredited session musician at Gold Star Studios in Houston and there he became associated with Roy Head (of Treat Her Right fame), for a time leading his band.  It was during that brief stint as leader that they recorded Tramp. I can't find that on YouTube, but check out a later kick-ass bluesy version by Johnny Winter solo!

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.

Beware of Darkness, George Harrison (1970)

I was very jazzed to hear that Martin Scorsese has directed a documentary, due out next year, on the one Beatle about whom I know the least and want to know the most.  Living in the Material World will be sort of a co-production with George Harrison, in that it will contain footage that George himself shot for a documentary that he intended to make someday.

Watching Paul McCartney receive his Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress recently, I couldn't help but wonder what George's legacy would have been had he lived longer.  Because, of the four of them, George's body of post-Beatles work is more pleasing to me - by many orders of magnitude - than that of any of the others.  Paul's mostly goofy, saccharine songs ... John's mostly heavy-handed, take-no-prisoners songs ... Ringo's mostly, well, fluff songs - on the whole they've left me cold.  Not so with George's work, both as a solo artist and with his pals the Traveling Wilburys.  Marginalized though he was while a Beatle, I am convinced their sound would have been far less memorable without his particular touch, and that his musicianship was every bit as evolved, if not more so.

Beware of Darkness is just one of many examples of George's gift; I've already written about his masterpiece, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. His unusual nasal singing voice - pervasively Liverpudlian - and the breadth of the licks he charmed out of his guitars over the years were entrancing to me. A YouTube commenter called the song George's "musical instruction manual for living life." I never thought of him as preachy, but his songs always seemed to emanate from a deeper place, where he could transcend the madness of life as a Beatle, something he would always be to the rest of his days. 

The longer he was on his own, the more George seemed to become supremely comfortable in his own skin, whereas as a Beatle he always seemed quite the opposite. The others always projected an essential sameness - what they were like as Beatles, just more so.  Beatle George was "the quiet one," almost morose, he rarely smiled; he was the youngest, and he seemed no match in the charisma department for Lennon and McCartney. He looked like he didn't even want to try. It was always obvious that he was a guitarist of considerable talent, and his guitar leads were distinctive, to say the least, but it was a mystery why he was treated as a bit player by the two alpha dogs. (I'm sure I answered my own question there, but at the time ...)

So when the Beatles finally parted the ways amid tremendous acrimony, George went solo before the year was out. Talk about your pent-up demand!  He had a backlog of material that couldn't find an outlet as a Beatle, and the floodgates opened with a 3-album release in All Things Must Pass, a title probably chosen for its many potential meanings. Beatles fans didn't think the Beatles could break up; they were supposed to be permanent. Weren't they?

Sadly, no, and even sadder, George shuffled off this mortal coil in at the peak of his powers as an artist. It affected me badly - it was not long after my father died, so I was already predisposed to mourn, but I felt then and still do that we'd lost someone we hadn't known well enough. Those people he counted as friends - and there were many - did him proud when they joined Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall the next year for the memorial Concert for George, one of the most moving tributes to a musician I've ever seen. And left me feeling even more than this was someone we needed to know better than we did. 
  
Maybe that will be rectified with the Scorsese doc. According to his wife Olivia, George didn't throw much out, so we should be treated to things we've never seen or heard before from all stages of his career. All things must pass, but sometimes what people have held on to give us a pathway to get back to where we once belonged.

Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley (1969)

Though it's only mid-July, I'm time traveling into next month because it is entirely too hot for my liking.  My estivations today take us to the topic of Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds, a song I will always associate with the dog days of summer for two reasons - the song was released on August 26, 1969, and Elvis died August 16, 1977, a day that this song was played into the ground by disc jockeys everywhere.   

I remember exactly what I was doing when the news came.  I was tooling around in my 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, baking with the sunroof open, on a day much like today on the temperature scale. Listening to the radio, as I always was. The song imprinted, and if I didn't associate it with high heat before, I did after that.

For someone my age, Elvis was a bit of an oddity.  I was too young to love him in his heyday, and then he became irrelevant for many years.  All that I knew of him when I was younger was that a family friend was mad about him and played Return to Sender endlessly, a song I found sort of catchy. I must have had no hormones at that point, because he was a terribly good-looking man with an electrifying smile and smoldering eyes (not to mention cheekbones that won't quit), as is evidenced in the photo on the above 45 sleeve (the last time he didn't look dissipated). In any event, to me he was more celebrity than musician.

In 1968, he staged what has been referred to as a "comeback," in a December unplugged concert special, a phenomenon of which I was completely unaware at that time. Since I was immersed in music then, why wouldn't I know about that?  The only thing I can think of is that the comeback occurred amidst a lot of other things that were more meaningful to me. The next year, he came out with the unforgettable Suspicious Minds, an operatic-style song deliciously long on melodrama that I truly loved.  I will never deny liking melodramatic songs if they're well done!

The song was written and first recorded by a Houston-based songwriter named Mark James. (I actually like his version too - a lot - which to me means it's a very good song at its core.) James was close friends with B.J. Thomas, and wrote Hooked on a Feeling for him; he was also the composer of Always On My Mind.  He recorded a demo of the song at Gold Star Studios, but nothing came of it.

James eventually left Houston to become a staff songwriter for the legendary producer Chips Moman at his American Sound Studios in Memphis. (I hate overusing that word, but Moman is legendary in the music business, so I don't know what other word to use.)  Moman was producing Thomas' stuff as well as, at that point, Presley's, and he presented Suspicious Minds to Elvis, having produced Mark James' earlier version to no particular effect. It was a collaboration that took Elvis further out of the wilderness that he had fallen into - way further. Suspicious Minds soared to #1, but it would be his last. 

Sadly, once he descended into drugs and Vegas getups, I never looked at him again while he was alive. Watching the comeback special, it's easy to see that, had I been just slightly older, I would have been every bit as much smitten as the rest. I will also admit to literally breaking down the first time I saw the video of him performing American Trilogy in the early 70's. (Watch to the end.) Already bloated and looking utterly ridiculous in his rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuit, he still had a voice that could possibly have rearranged the planetary order. His premature and unnecessary death is one of the many great tragedies in American music.

Temptation Is Hard To Fight, George McGregor and the Bronzettes (1967)

I can be very late to a party sometimes, and in the case of AMC's Mad Men, I'm late by exactly three cable television seasons.  In the run-up to the premiere of the fourth on July 25, I am devouring - that's the only word for it - the first three seasons so that I can be current and enjoy the fun in real time. For my trouble, I was treated yesterday to a soundtrack song that made me snap out of my supine position and say, WTF?

The song was the outro to the second episode of the second season, and its ominous, haunted sensibility was scene-perfect. Doing some quick research, I learned that the song was Temptation Is Hard To Fight, by the musical obscurity George McGregor and the Bronzettes. And so it was off to the races for me.

Another one of those situations where the backstory isn't at one's fingertips, in all likelihood the Mad Men people excavated this song from the Eccentric Soul anthology of CDs (cover above), specifically the one called Twinight's Lunar Rotation.  I have a few of these Numero Group treasures but I didn't have this one - up until a few hours ago, when I rectified that by running over to the The Best Damn Independent Record Store in the Land, Akron, Ohio's Square Records!

The Twinight label was Chicago-based. While the label was prolific in scouting and recording local soul acts, the vast majority of its history is bound up in artists who could have been contenders for the public's attentions, but never were.  Whatever the formula for success might have been, it eluded these artists, many of whom got the most airplay in the wee hours.

The preamble of Twinight's Lunar Rotation companion booklet paints the picture: "It's a slot for high school talent show winners, major label cast offs, minor label upgrades, and girlfriends with decent voices. A few hits might squeak through, but for the most part it's the long, dark night of soul. The DJs call it lunar rotation, broadcast lingo for radio limbo, all-night airplay for 45s with no chance of making the charts, a nice time for a disc jockey to make good on that fifty dollar handshake. It's hope, but not much. Between 1967 and 1972, Chicago's lunar landscape was littered with Twinight labeled 45s. Of the 55 singles released ... only eight charted, and only one of those wasn't by Syl Johnson."

That's a damn shame, where Temptation Is Hard To Fight is concerned. The entire production - from instrumental flourishes, to George McGregor's anguished delivery, to the wails of the backing Bronzettes - is gritty and British Northern Soul-esque in its sound (for a minute I thought of dear old Chuck Wood).  What a find.  

Hailing from Alabama, George McGregor and his more famous brother Billy started their secular Chicagoland musical careers in 1960 in the Antennas and later Shirley and her Squires. Originally gospel singers, the need to make some real money led to soul music after Billy returned from the army in 1959. (Billy, as much a songwriter as a performer who worked in the steel mills his entire life, is perhaps best known for Mr. Shy. I myself never heard it, but regionally it achieved fame.)

Believing his brother had the greater singing talent, Billy wrote the song for George, and teamed up with his friend, steel guitarist Jimmy Jones, to craft what could have been - but wasn't - George's breakthrough. On the B-side, as the McGregor Brothers, they served up Every Time I Wake Up. With no promotion or distribution, and barely any airplay, the single went by the wayside.  George McGregor continued to open for other artists, but was murdered in 1979. Thanks to Mad Men, his spirit lives on.