Highlights from Brubeck’s pre- and post-Columbia years
By collecting early ‘50s sides waxed for Fantasy and post-70s sides laid down for Concord and Telarc, this two-disc set tells the story of pianist Dave Brubeck before and after his more famous time at Columbia. The selections taste his earliest work with an octet, trio work with Cal Tjader and Ron Crotty, and his initial liaisons with saxophonist Paul Desmond. It skips the seminal quartet formed with Desmond, Joe Morello and Eugene Wright, and rejoins Brubeck in the early 80s in a group with his son Chris on electric bass and bass trombone. Though the original versions of Brubeck hits “Take Five†and “Blue Rondo Ala Turk,†aren’t here, the distinctive elements – Brubeck’s blocky chords (magnificently played with competing hands on “Look for the Silver Lining†and chasing one another up and down the keyboard on “This Can’t Be Loveâ€), Desmond’s brilliant tone, and the exploration of percussive arrangements and unusual time signatures – are all heard early on.
Albums written and recorded especially for young children are the diciest of propositions for parents. Repeated requests (nay, commands) of “play it again†can soon become torture to older ears. There are precious few records in the world that you can listen to over and over (and over and over), and even fewer that will entertain both toddler and adult. James Andrew “Ukulele Jim†Clark has found a winning formula in combining clever original songs, well-weathered favorites of the playground set, and a few left-field selections that fit nicely in the mix. Central to Clark’s appeal is his inviting singing voice and the ukulele’s unique ability to create a friendly, relaxing mood anywhere, anytime.
The album opens with the title song’s brilliant evocation of a magical jumping flea circus. Instrumentalist Ben Ticehurst adds musical flair with his tuba, organ and celesta, and Clark’s Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks styled flea voices are very cute. But it’s the cleverness of his imagery that will amaze and astound. For one night only, a tiny-top tent houses a ukulele-playing flea standing upon a thimble as he presents his singing and dancing brethren, a high wire centipede act, acrobat grasshoppers jumping through rings of fire, pill bug canon balls, and an all-beetle band. The circus returns later in the album to reprise a lullaby coda of crickets accompanying the circus’ exit and dreams of its return.
Clark provides his young audience many opportunities to stretch their imaginations, wondering what they’ll be when they grow up, picturing dream worlds, selecting super-powers, and providing a happy ending for the anthropomorphic horn of “The Lonely Little Saxophone.†Clark’s rendition of “Wheels on the Bus†manages to swing a bit mid-song, and with “Rock a Bye Baby†he marries the classic lullaby (three distinct verses, plus refrain!) to the bass line and piano vamp of the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La Da.†Ticehurst adds lovely strings and glockenspiel to “Little Star,†and the exotica classic “Yellow Bird†(famously recorded by vibraphone master Arthur Lyman) provides an unexpected treat from the past.
On their third album, modern country duo Sugarland (Jennifer Nettles-vocals, Kristian Bush-guitar/vocals) makes a bold bid for cross-over success. How well their effort succeeds depends on where you sit as a listener in the country-pop spectrum. Fans of modern country music may feel this forsakes the few threads of country roots that remain in Nashville’s productions. Ironically though, fans of earlier, twangier country music may be willing to take Sugarland’s arena-ready rock productions as just that – something fully divorced from Nashville’s faint echoes of roots music. Taken on this latter axis, Bryan Gallimore’s outsized productions – enormous drum sounds, slashing electric guitars, heavy echoes and the ubiquitous “programming†– make a good impression.
The duo’s original songs are catchy and Jennifer Nettles’ voice cuts through the rock backings like a fog cutter in a thick bank. When the productions occasionally lighten, as on the lead single “Stuck Like Glue,†the music turns into modern day bubblegum, with riffy lyrics, cute singing and a toasting bridge that suggests Gwen Stefani in Music City. One might argue about whether Sugarland’s previous albums had already moved far away from traditional country sounds, but The Incredible Machine puts the conversation to bed as the duo openly bids for modern rock success with power-ballads like “Tonight†and a heavy dose of studio effects. The closest the album comes to even modern Nashville’s notion of country is “Little Miss,†but even here the song grows from acoustic guitars into a heavily wrought production.
When the Austin-based Derailers broke out with 1996’s Jackpot, their Bakersfield twang reawakened the ears of many honky-tonk fans. The band’s main inspiration, Buck Owens, was still holding down a weekend gig at his Crystal Palace, but it was the Derailers who took their Fender guitars on the road and stirred up dance floors coast to coast. The band wrote killer original material, picked some mean guitar and sang with the conviction of Owens, Merle Haggard and Wynn Stewart. As the band evolved they took on other characteristics of Owens and his Buckaroos, tipping their hat to pop music with a twangy take on Prince’s “Raspberry Beret,†a driving cover of the Crystals’ “Then She Kissed Me,†and guitars that recalled both the Beach Boys and the British Invasion.
In 2003, lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Tony Villanueva left shortly after the release of Genuine (their second and last album for Sony’s Lucky Dog imprint), and the band’s co-founder, Brian Hofeldt, stepped forward to sing all of the lead vocals and write the band’s new material. The Derailers returned to the indie world and pressed on with new albums in 2006 and 2008, a Buck Owens covers record in 2007, and most importantly, years of roadwork in the honky-tonks of Texas. As good as the band’s albums have been, their live shows have always been their raison d’être. These fifteen tracks were recorded in 2009 and 2010 at Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton, TX and the legendary Gruene Hall, and provide a good feel for an evening spent in the company of a great country dance band.
The Archies’ Ron Dante sings sweet bubblegum pop as the Cuff Links
Vocalist Ron Dante is the American version of British studio singer Tony Burrows. Though he didn’t duplicate Burrows’ feat of charting hit singles as the lead singer of four different groups in a single year (Edison Lighthouse, White Plains, Pipkins, Brotherhood of Man, all in 1970), Dante’s singing was nearly as ubiquitous. His first brush with fame came with the novelty single “Leader of the Laundromat,†by the Detergents, and he was widely heard singing the famous “you deserve a break today†jingle for McDonald’s. But his biggest score was as the lead singer of the Archies, minting the single-of-the-year (and the national anthem of the bubblegum world), “Sugar, Sugar.†In parallel with the Archies’ ride on the charts, Dante re-teamed with Detergents’ songwriter-producers Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss and cooked up this album under the Cuff Links banner.
The Cuff Links were, like Tony Burrows’ “bands,†a studio concoction rather than a working group. Dante provided both lead and brilliantly arranged backing voices, and as on the Archies’ records, went uncredited. Though he recorded a solo album in 1970, his first real claim to named fame came a few years later as the producer of many Barry Manilow hit records, and later as an award-winning Broadway producer. His anonymous work with the Detergents, Archies and Cuff Links has been sporadically anthologized and reissued over the years, focusing mostly on the hit singles; this CD release reintroduces the Cuff Links first album back to the market, adding a handful of singles drawn from the group’s still-unissued second album, and several more bonuses.
The album is a by-product of the effervescent single “Tracy,†which became a hit just as the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar†started to fade on the charts. The album was recorded quickly to capitalize on the single’s success, but with songs drawn from Vance and Pockriss’ catalog of co-writes, plus a pair of well selected covers, it’s a great deal more solid than the short time in the studio would suggest. Rupert Holmes (who would later hit with “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)â€) was brought in to arrange the strings, and his simple lines perfectly complement Dante’s overlaid vocals. The bubbly tone of the title track is balanced by wistful tunes, including the moving antiwar sentiments of “All the Young Women,†the Left Banke-styled nostalgia of “I Remember,†and the autumnal lost-love B-side “Where Do You Go?â€
The two cover songs are given nice twists, with a catchy organ riff and memorable call-and-response vocals on “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,†and an effective Burt Bacharach-styled treatment of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.†The songs run deeper than comparable bubblegum tunes written expressly for the pre-teen crowd, but their melodies remain hummable, and the lyrics catchy. Like the music that came out of Don Kirshner’s world, the craft here is superb – just listen how the album’s second single, “When Julie Comes Around,†builds masterfully from a tense organ and drum opening into a perfect mix of electric and acoustic guitars and then builds into a joyous melody in parallel with the lyrics turn from loneliness to happiness; the transitions back and forth between desperation and elation are handled just as perfectly as the song finally plays itself out with a smile.
No doubt some will take to these reconstructions of famous Elvis Presley songs, while others will feel they’re bastardizations on par with Ted Turner’s colorization of movies. The truth lies somewhere in between. Presley’s iconic vocals have been lifted and recontextualized in modern arrangements augmented with new instrumental performances. The results are a great deal more radical than George and Giles Martin’s mashups of the Beatles catalog for Love. At times the rhythms will remind you of the monotonous dance floor beats of the Stars on 45 medleys, and Brendan O’Brien’s overbearing remake of “That’s Alright†borrows its dominant riff from Katrina and the Wave’s “Walking on Sunshine.â€
Unlike Love, this feels less like a celebration than a tortured attempt to make Elvis relevant to twenty-first century ears. The shame of it is that Elvis’ original recordings still hold the magic laid into them fifty years ago, and much of what makes them special is lost in these translations. The contrast of hillbilly guitars and burning vocals is buried under mounds of modern studio sounds that compete with rather than amplify Elvis’ preternatural ferocity. Casting “Heartbreak Hotel†into a delta blues might be an interesting trick if the producer (O’Brien again) trusted listeners to stay entertained without adding sizzling Vegas horns. But he can’t help himself, or perhaps he can’t escape the live show’s demands. Serban Ghenea’s hyperbolic reworking of “Blue Suede Shoes†suffers the same fate, overwhelming both Elvis and the listener with studio pyrotechnics that are distracting rather than energizing.
The acoustic arrangement given “Love Me Tender†momentarily drops the album’s bombast, but Dea Norberg’s duet vocal doesn’t stand up to Elvis’ original. It’s not impossible to overlay an inspiring duet on Elvis – Celine Dion did so in a video performance of “If I Can Dream,†for example – but this is the wrong song and the arrangement is too sedate. Shelly St.-Germain fares better on “Can’t Help Falling in Love,†though the arrangement’s percussion distracts with its busyness. If you’ve been asking yourself “what would Elvis sound like if he were recording with a modern chart act,†perhaps these reworkings will help you imagine the answer. But even those few tracks that retain some of the originals’ joyousness, such as “Bossa Nova Baby,†fall to the disc’s hyperkinetic overdrive.
Superb meeting of two blues guitar legends with added DVD
This 1983 live performance summit meeting between a legend and a soon-to-be legend has been reissued a few times on CD, including a hybrid SACD in 2003 and a remastered CD edition in July 2010. This latest version augments the original eleven audio tracks with video of seven performances, adding “Born Under a Bad Sign,†“Texas Flood†and “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town†to the song list. At the time this pair met in a Canadian TV studio, Vaughan was blazing a trail into the blues world with his debut album, Texas Flood. King was long since a legend, and though he apparently didn’t recognize the name “Vaughan,†he immediately recognized the young guitarist who’d sat in with him whenever he played in Austin.
The video dimension turns this session into a master class for both Vaughan and the viewer. Vaughan is seen soaking up lessons from King’s guitar playing, stage manner and the verbal notes he provides between songs. What was previously a musical conversation now becomes a visual one as well. King is often seen marveling – almost in surprise – at Vaughan’s playing, and Vaughan’s expressions capture the joy he feels in so clearly making the grade. Without a live audience, the two bluesmen play for each other and for the blues. The ease of King’s play, the naturalness with which the guitar forms an extension to his soul is awe inspiring. The snippets of dialogue between the CD’s tracks have always shown the personal bond that complemented the guitar slingers’ artistic connection, but the visuals shed new light on the deep affection they clearly have for one another.
King and Vaughan are backed by the former’s tack sharp road band, and run through a set drawn mostly from King’s catalog. You can hear what was on the horizon, though, as Vaughan rips into his own “Pride and Joy†with monster tone and a gutsy vocal. Throughout the session the players trade licks and prod each other with solos that quote all the great players from whom they learned. King’s influence is clear in Vaughan’s playing, but hearing them side-by-side gives listeners an opportunity to hear how the same fundamentals change as they filter through different fingers and hardware. As Samuel Charters points out in one of the three sets of liner notes, Albert King fans will particularly savor the rare opportunity to hear and see him play rhythm guitar. The audio does a nice job of keeping their guitars separated slightly left and right, and the video lets you see exactly who’s playing what.
Highlights from Brubeck’s pre- and post-Columbia years
