Caravan - Caravan 1968

For their first album, Caravan was surprisingly strong. While steeped in the same British psychedelia that informed bands such as Love Children, Pink Floyd, and Tomorrow, Caravan relates freedom of spirit and mischief along the lines of Giles, Giles & Fripp or Gong. The band's roots can be traced to a British blue-eyed soul combo called the Wilde Flowers. Among the luminaries to have passed through this Caravan precursor were Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, and Hugh Hopper, and Brian Hopper (pre-Soft Machine, naturally). By the spring of 1968, Caravan had settled nicely into a quartet consisting of Pye Hastings (guitar/bass/vocals), Richard Coughlan (drums), David Sinclair (organ/vocals), and Richard Sinclair (bass/guitar/vocals). Inspired by the notoriety and acclaim that Soft Machine encountered during the burgeoning days of London's underground scene, Caravan began a residency at the Middle Earth club. Additionally, the band was shopping a homemade demo tape around to local record companies. Before long, entrepreneur Tony Cox worked out a deal for them to record on the newly founded U.K. division of the Verve label. Caravan's self-titled debut is equally as inventive and infinitely more subtle than the Soft Machine's Volume One or Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Two of the album's best tunes -- the ethereal "Place of My Own" was backed with the dreamlike "Magic Man" -- were issued as the band's first single. Those tracks accurately exemplify the subtle complexities that Caravan would hone to great effect on later recordings. The same can also be said for album cuts such as "Love Song With Flute" and the extended nine-minute "Where but for Caravan Would I?" The latter title aptly exemplifies Caravan's decidedly less than turgid attitude toward themselves -- a refreshing contrast from the temperamental and serious Art School approach adopted by Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues. The mono and stereo mixes of the long-player are striking in their disparities. The stereo mix is at times opaque and virtually swallows the vocals most specifically on the tracks "Policeman" and "Grandma's Lawn." Otherwise, there are numerous additional nuances that discern the two. The single version of "Hello Hello" is also included as a bonus. This track was the follow-up 45 to "Place of My Own" and would appear in a slightly different form on their next LP, If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You. Potential consumers should note that the sound quality on this package is indescribably better than the HTD Records 1996 CD pressing. AMG.

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Marc Benno - Lost In Austin 1979

Marc Benno came up playing guitar in various bands in Austin, TX, in the late '60s, then moved to Los Angeles, where he hooked up with Leon Russell and formed the duo Asylum Choir, which released one album in 1968 and recorded a second before splitting up. (The second Asylum Choir album was released in the wake of Leon Russell's commercial success in 1971 and hit #70 in the charts.) He made four albums of mainstream pop/rock in the 1970s, the most successful of which was the third, Ambush, in 1972. AMG.

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Stealers Wheel - Ferguslie Park 1974

Ferguslie Park was recorded after a dizzying string of changes in Stealers Wheel -- co-founder Gerry Rafferty's exit soon after finishing the group's first LP, his replacement by Luther Grosvenor and the delayed climb of "Stuck in the Middle with You," Rafferty's return, and the firing of all involved and the reduction of the group to its founding duo of Rafferty and Joe Egan. The resulting album, recorded with some nine support players (including ex-Herd members Gary Taylor and Andrew Steele, plus guitarists Joe Jammer and Bernie Holland), conductor/arranger Richard Hewson in support, and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller producing, is an upbeat if somewhat less focused work than its predecessor -- the mix of hard rock ("What More Could You Want") and lean, melodic songs ("Good Businessman") highlighted by lush choruses, and augmented with occasional spacy digressions such as the shimmering percussion-based interlude between "Wheelin'" and "Waltz (You Know It Makes Sense)," makes this a surprisingly diverse body of music. There wasn't a hit single to be found here, however, which meant that listeners had to find the album on their own; there are moments that anticipate (albeit distantly) Rafferty's solo work, including some well-placed sax breaks, and also jagged, bluesy guitar in all sorts of unexpected places, such as behind the tuneful organ on "Blind Faith" (and the "Shakin' All Over" riff even makes a veiled appearance on "Good Businessman"). AMG.

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Jimmy Hughes - Steal Away - The Early Fame Recordings 1964

Jimmy Hughes established producer Rick Hall's fledgling FAME Studios as an R&B mecca with his 1964 blues ballad "Steal Away." The ex-gospel singer hooked up with Hall in 1962, but it wasn't until the explosive "Steal Away" was issued that his career took off. With an intense, crying vocal style that was perfect for deep soul ballads, Hughes also scored with the pleading "Why Not Tonight" in 1968, and the atypically uptempo "Neighbor, Neighbor" proved another giant hit. Hughes broke away from Hall and recorded an album for Volt before retiring from performing in the early '70s. AMG.
 

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Longbranch Pennywhistle - Longbranch Pennywhistle 1969

Longbranch Pennywhistle's only album is mostly of interest to collectors and intense Eagles fans, as it features Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther collaborating before either had risen to fame. It's more low-key and less slick than the Eagles -- than even the early Eagles records, in fact -- but undeniably also lacks the pop hooks that made the Eagles successful stars from the git-go. Sometimes there's a rollicking boogie or bar band rock flavor that works against the pair's primary strengths, which were their easygoing country-rock harmonies. It's best on the folkiest ballads, the standout number being "Mister, Mister." The most famous song on this minor early country-rock LP, however, is "Kite Woman," which Souther would do again for his early-'70s solo debut album. AMG.
 

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Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country 1969

Opening slowly with the dark, swampy "Born on the Bayou," Bayou Country reveals an assured Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band that has found its voice between their first and second album. It's not just that "Born on the Bayou" announces that CCR has discovered its sound -- it reveals the extent of John Fogerty's myth-making. With this song, he sketches out his persona; it makes him sound as if he crawled out of the backwoods of Louisiana instead of being a native San Franciscan. He carries this illusion throughout the record, through the ominous meanderings of "Graveyard Train" through the stoked cover of "Good Golly Miss Molly" to "Keep on Chooglin'," which rides out a southern-fried groove for nearly eight minutes. At the heart of Bayou Country, as well as Fogerty's myth and Creedence's entire career, is "Proud Mary." A riverboat tale where the narrator leaves a good job in the city for a life rolling down the river, the song is filled with details that ring so true that it feels autobiographical. The lyric is married to music that is utterly unique yet curiously timeless, blending rockabilly, country, and Stax R&B into something utterly distinctive and addictive. "Proud Mary" is the emotional fulcrum at the center of Fogerty's seductive imaginary Americana, and while it's the best song here, his other songs are no slouch, either. "Born on the Bayou" is a magnificent piece of swamp-rock, "Penthouse Pauper" is a first-rate rocker with the angry undertow apparent on "Porterville" and "Bootleg" is a minor masterpiece, thanks to its tough acoustic foundation, sterling guitar work, and clever story. All the songs add up to a superb statement of purpose, a record that captures Creedence Clearwater Revival's muscular, spare, deceptively simple sound as an evocative portrait of America. AMG.
 

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East Of Eden - Mercator Projected 1969

East of Eden's debut LP is one of the hardest rocking albums to come out of the progressive rock movement, and maybe the best non-Rolling Stones albums issued by English Decca during all of the late 1960s. It's also one of the most daring debut albums of its period, less tightly focused than, say, King Crimson's Court of the Crimson King but otherwise equally bold and maybe more challenging. The whole record is eerie -- coming from a pop culture where most psychedelic rock tended toward the light and airy -- the way the high-impact bass, drum, and guitar parts interact with the distinctly Oriental and Central/Eastern European classical influences. The title track is a surprise coming from any British psychedelic band of the period, opening with a pounding heavy metal beat pumped out on Steve York's bass and Dave Dufort's drums, while Dave Arbus' electric violin subs for what would normally be the rhythm guitar part and Geoff Nicholson's guitar twists a blues riff around before setting a Jimi Hendrix-like wave of tonal pyrotechnics ablaze for the finale. Though most of the rest isn't as hard rocking as that, it is still progressive rock with balls. "Isadora" may have a few flute flourishes too many, but it also has a beat, and "Waterways" (described on the original jacket as "Niotic Landscape in 5/4"), after a meandering opening, breaks loose in a hard-edged piece of heavy metal raga rock (with a sax part that fits in perfectly), something like what the Yardbirds might've attempted if they'd stayed together through 1969 and forsaken their pop pretensions -- and then it finishes with the kind of brooding, violin-based ballad that anticipates the 1973-era David Cross/John Wetton/Bill Bruford lineup of King Crimson. And "Centaur Woman" takes us back to almost a mid-1960s blues-rock mode, reminiscent of the Graham Bond Organization, except that East of Eden quickly kicks out the song structures, taking Coltrane-like sax excursions before throwing in an extended bass guitar solo. Side two of the album opens with the brooding "Bathers," perhaps the most conventional progressive cut on this album and, not coincidentally, the least interesting song here. "Communion," by comparison, is a composition whose inspiration was a Bartok string quartet, and is dominated by Arbus' violin. The album finishes with the high-energy "In the Stable of the Sphinx," a blazing showcase for electric guitar, violin, tenor, and alto sax that's worth the price of admission by itself and must've been amazing to hear on stage. Mercator Projected was reissued on CD in Japan in 2000 as part of the British Rock Legend Series by Universal Music Group. AMG.

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Dan Ar Bras - Douar Nevez 1977

One of the most melodic guitarists in Celtic music, Dan Ar Bras has recorded as a soloist and with innovative Celtic harp, bagpipe and flute player Alan Stivell. A pioneer of electric folk in the early 1970s, Ar Bras has continued to explore the textural possibilities of electric and acoustic guitar. Ar Bras hooked up with Stivell in 1967, shortly after moving to Brittany, a region in western France. He remained an essential element of Stivell's sound for more than a decade and made important contributions to nine of Stivell's albums, including the influential Renaissance of the Celtic Harp in 1972, and the reunion album Again in 1994. After Stivell broke up the band in 1976, Ar Bras spent six months as a member of Fairport Convention, leaving before recording with the group. Although he assembled his own tradition-rooted band, they were equally skilled at electric music and recorded a rock version of Lennon and McCartney's "Rain." Ar Bras switched to a Celtic style of playing acoustic guitar in the mid-1980s and recorded a heavily atmospheric album, Music for Silences to Come, in 1985. In the 1990s, Ar Bras assembled a 50-piece band, L'Heritage Des Celtes. A self-titled studio album was released in 1994 with a live recording, En Concert, following a year later.

Ar Bras continues to be involved with Fairport Convention, recording in Dave Pegg's Woodworm studios near Banbury, Oxfordshire and performing regularly at Fairport's annual festival in Cropedy. AMG.

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Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul 1968

Appearing after a blockbuster debut and a sophomore set that was rather disappointing (in comparison), 1968's Lady Soul proved Aretha Franklin, the pop sensation, was no fluke. Her performances were more impassioned than on her debut, and the material just as strong, an inspired blend of covers and originals from the best songwriters in soul and pop music. The opener, "Chain of Fools," became the biggest hit, driven by a chorus of cascading echoes by Franklin and her bedrock backing vocalists, the Sweet Impressions, plus the unforgettable, earthy guitar work of guest Joe South. The album's showpiece, though, was "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," a song written expressly for her by Brill Building pop stalwarts Gerry Goffin and Carole King, based on a title coined by producer Jerry Wexler. One of the landmark performances in pop music, the song floats serenely through the verses until, swept up by Ralph Burns' stirring string arrangement again and again, Franklin opens up on the choruses with one of the most transcendent vocals of her career. And just as she'd previously transformed a soul classic (Otis Redding's "Respect") into a signature piece of her own, Franklin courageously reimagined songs by heavyweights James Brown, Ray Charles, and the Impressions. Brown's "Money Won't Change You" is smooth and kinetic, her testifying constantly reinforced by interjections from the Sweet Inspirations. Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready," a 1965 civil-rights anthem and a hit for the Impressions, is taken at a slower pace than the original; after a quiet verse, Franklin lets loose amidst a magisterial brass arrangement by Arif Mardin. Powered by three hit singles (each nested in the upper reaches of the pop Top Ten), Lady Soul became Aretha Franklin's second gold LP and remained on the charts for over a year. AMG.

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