Author Archives: hyperbolium

The Soulful Strings: The Magic of Christmas

SoulfulStrings_TheMagicOfChristmas1968 Chicago soul with strings, finally on CD

The Soulful Strings are surprisingly little known, given the relative success of their first few albums. Their origin lay somewhere between Chess label owner Leonard Chess, producer Esmond Edwards, and arranger Richard Evans, but the project’s voice and artistic success lay squarely with the latter. Working with Cadet studio players, including Charles Stepney, Lenard Druss, Bunky Green, Phil Upchurch, and Ronald Steele, Evans fashioned superb, soulful music that wove together a string section and jazz players without artifice or novelty. The strings lent an orchestral weight to the solid funk of the band, broadening the tonal palette without losing the music’s essential swing.

Although the group released six studio albums and a live set, only their second album, Groovin’ with the Soulful Strings (#59 Top LPs, #6 R&B, #2 Jazz) has seen previously licensed for digital reissue, and then only in Japan. The Evans-composed single “Burning Spear” (#64 Hot 100, #36 R&B) has turned up on compilation albums and been widely sampled, but the bulk of the group’s catalog remained locked in the vault, tied up in vagaries of commercial potential, much to Evans’ frustration. Evans would continue on to arrange and produce for many other artists, and he spent twenty-five years as a much-loved professor at Berklee, but the red tape tying up Soulful Strings’ reissues vexed him to his passing in 2014; no doubt this reissue of the group’s fourth album would have made the best possible Christmas present.

The album’s song selection mixes traditional Christmas songs, classical pieces and a few jazz and R&B titles. Along with the studio regulars, Evans added vibraphonist Bobby Christian (a talented percussionist who’d been a mainstay of Dick Shory’s ensembles) and harpist Dorothy Ashby, the latter of whom Evans had signed and produced for three albums with Cadet. Ashby solos alongside flutist Lenny Druss on an arrangement of “The Little Drummer Boy” whose beat is equally stoke by the bass, drums and cellos. Ashby and Druss provide the swirling flakes for Claude Thornhill’s “Snowfall,” and Ashby’s harp takes the lead on a bluesy rendition of Charles Brown’s “Merry Christmas Baby.” The vibraphone provides mood throughout the album, but it’s turned loose for a pair of high-energy solos on Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.”

In addition to strings, woodwinds, percussion, horns, bass and drums, Evans employed congas and even Ron Steele’s electric sitar. His arrangements span the minor key string fantasy of “Deck the Halls” to a funky take on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” highlighted by the outstanding cello work of Cleveland Eaton. The funk continues to reign on “Jingle Bells,” with drummer Morris Jennings and guitarist Phil Upchurch joined by what’s credited as a French horn, but what sounds like an oboe (either way, most likely played by Lenny Druss, who could apparently play anything with a mouthpiece or reed). Christian’s vibes provide a suitably warm lead for Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song,” and the album closes with flute and vibes leading the “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.”

Richard Evans was a scholarly, studious and dedicated artist, but he also had a terrific sense of swing and a fun sense of humor (check out the melodic quote of “La Marseillaise” in “Jingle Bells”). Together with his studio crew, string section and a few talented guests, he put together a Christmas album that celebrates the season in a truly original fashion. This album plays well with holiday titles from Charles Brown, Jimmy Smith, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald and label sets by Atco, Motown and Verve, but these arrangements and performances have a magic all their own. For next Christmas, let’s hope Real Gone puts on the red suit again and brings the rest of the Soulful Strings’ catalog in their bag. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Raging Fire: Everything is Roses – 1985-1989

RagingFire_EverythingIsRosesMid-80s post-punk from the heart of country music

From a vantage point on the West Coast, Jason and the Nashville Scorchers seemed to be an anomaly – a rock band from Nashville – and when they dropped “Nashville” from their name, the connection between Music City and native-born rock music grew even more tenuous. But the Scorchers turn out to be both the nationally known emblem of and an inspiration for a lively Nashville rock scene that was broader than the mating of country and punk. A less widely known darling of that scene was Raging Fire, whose mid-to-late ‘80s catalog is sampled for this 22-track anthology.

Fronted by vocalist Melora Zaner, Raging Fire could pull back and give hints of their Nashville origins, but the band’s dynamic rock ‘n’ roll rage was more in line with the barking poetry of Patti Smith, post-punk of X and new wave studio sounds of the 80s, than southern rock or country twang. Even the band’s acoustic numbers, such as “After Loving One Man From East Texas,” have some bite. Had they been in San Francisco or Los Angeles, or five years later in Olympia, things might have been different; but as it played out, they attracted attention from record labels, but never closed a deal.

The group toured the midwest and south, and gained college radio play for their EP A Family Thing and album Faith Love Was Made Of. The former is included here in its entirety, the latter sampled alongside demos and tracks drawn from compilation albums. Without a label deal, the band’s momentum stalled, the members’ lives moved in different directions, and the group drifted and broke apart. With this first-ever reissue, it’s still hard to imagine this music coming out of Nashville, but even harder to imagine there wasn’t one label who could get this band signed. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Raging Fire’s Home Page

The Royal Hangmen: Hell Yeah! An 80s Garage Tribute

RoyalHangmen_HellYeahReviving the garage rock revivalists

Garage rock has turned out to be a gift that keeps on giving. The original mid-60s singles movement was recognized in the writings of Lester Bangs and Greg Shaw, and memorialized in 1972 on Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets. The sounds continued to echo ever more scratchily in the follow-on avalanche of Pebbles, Boulders, Back From the Grave, Girls in the Garage and their myriad peers, and the ethos took root among the DIY punk movement of the late-70s. By the early 1980s, a full-blown revival was underway, and over the succeeding decades, the sound has morphed and been reborn around the world.

Enter Zurich’s Royal Hangmen, who released their first demos in 2006, the single “Mary Jane” in 2009 and their self-titled debut LP in 2012. Their latest 4-song EP salutes the first wave of garage revivalists, including covers of the Chesterfield Kings (“She Told Me Lies”), Wylde Mammoths (“Help That Girl”), Miracle Workers (“I’ll Walk Away”) and Cynics (“Yeah!”). Just as the first-wave revivalists stocked their sets with covers of obscure singles from the 1960s, the Hangmen have selected their material with a connoisseur’s ear for the revivalists’ originals, and recreated the same sort of sweaty reverence these sides deserve. There are some great memories here, given a fresh shot of fuzz by the Royal Hangmen. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

The Royal Hangmen’s Home Page

Plainsong: Reinventing Richard РThe Songs of Richard Fari̱a

Plainsong_ReinventingRichardRichard Fariña’s songs reimagined for the new millennium

Richard Fariña’s untimely 1966 death silenced one of the folk movement’s rapidly blossoming voices. The albums he recorded with his spouse Mimi have survived in reissue [1 2 3] and anthology, but for many listeners, Fariña’s voice doesn’t come to mind until their ears are rung by the dulcimer of “Pack Up Your Sorrows” or stung by the protest of “House Un-American Blues Activities Dream.” His songs continue to find their way into the setlists and records of other artists, but for the most faithful, they’ve served as on-going guideposts. Two of those loyalists, Iain Matthews and Andy Roberts, co-founders of Plainsong, have been performing Fariña’s works on stage and in studio for more than forty years, and now come back together to pay a more consolidated tribute.

The trio, including Mark Griffiths, offers fifteen of Fariña’s songs, including the previously unrecorded “Sombre Winds.” They focus on the songs, rather than the Fariñas’ original performances, imagining how they might sound if written and recorded today. Well, that’s not entirely true, given the bluesy doo-wop treatment of “One Way Ticket.” Perhaps it’s fairer to say that this is the sound of artists who have so deeply absorbed these songs, they can turn them back out to the world in any number of interesting forms, converting the “Sell-Out Agitated Waltz” into soulful straight time, taming the agitated ask of “Pack Up Your Sorrows” into a placid invitation and turning “Hard Loving Loser” into a summery country tune. These broader interpretations show off both the material’s innate strengths and the the interpreter’s imagination.

Other titles, including “Another Country” and “Lemonade Lady,” are given to more subtle changes, adding flecks of the interpreter’s wares while keeping closer to the original mood. The musicianship is superb throughout, and the vocals, though sung in close harmony similar to the Fariñas, are comprised of of male voices whose timbres align more closely than the Fariñas’ high-low pairing. The difference in the vocal pattern is a blessing, as it gives each interpretation an original top line, even when the songs aren’t radically reworked. It may be hard for listeners to hear past the Fariñas’ original recordings (and, in particular, surrender Richard’s driving dulcimer), but doing so lets you hear these songs anew. And in the hands of artists who’ve had a lifelong love affair with the material, the results are fresh and fascinating. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Various Artist: Cold and Bitter Tears – The Songs of Ted Hawkins

Various_ColdAndBitterTearsRemembering the songs of Ted Hawkins

Ted Hawkins was the perfect college radio artist: articulate, soulful, emotionally powerful and most importantly, an outsider. His hardscrabble life simultaneously limited the commercial growth of his career and defined the authenticity upon which his art rested. What made him a particularly interesting fit for college radio was that his music wasn’t outwardly challenging. It wasn’t discordant noise or expletive-filled speedcore; it was soulful folk music, made with guitars and keyboards, and sung in a style that threaded easily with more commercially popular blues and soul. But that was just the musical surface, and beneath the performance were songs unlike those written in Memphis or Detroit or New York, or even Hawkins’ adopted home of Los Angeles.

With his passing in 1995, his singing voice was silenced, but in the tradition of folk music, the songs he left behind continue to speak his truth. This first ever tribute to Hawkins gathers fifteen performers to sing Hawkins originals, and adds a bonus demo of Hawkins singing an a cappella demo of the otherwise unrecorded “Great New Year.” The performers include many well-known names, including James McMurtry, Kacey Chambers and Mary Gauthier, and like all tribute albums, the magic is in selecting the material, matching it to the right performers and finding interpretations that honor the original while adding the covering artist’s stamp. Co-producers Kevin “Shinyribs” Russell, Jenni Finlay and Brian T. Atkinson have done an admirable job on all three counts.

The collection’s most well-known title, “Sorry You’re Sick,” found a sympathetic voice in Gauthier, whose own battle with addiction conjures a first-hand understanding of the song’s protagonists. Kasey and Bill Chambers give the title track a Hank Williams-sized helpings of anguish and loneliness, and McMurtry’s leadoff “Big Things” is more resolute in its melancholy than Hawkins’ original. The latter includes the lyric “Now I’ve got a song here to write, I stay up most every night, creating with hope they’ll live on forever,” a dream that comes true exactly as McMurtry sings it. While Hawkins’ original performances hinted at twang, his lyrics of longing and loneliness are easily fit to full-blown country arrangements, such as the two-stepping barroom infidelity of Sunny Sweeney’s “Happy Hour.”

Hawkins’ songs were surprisingly hopeful and good humored in the face of loss and unfulfilled desire. Tim Easton chases an end to loneliness in “One Hundred Miles,” Evan Felker seeks “Peace and Happiness,” and facing the greatest loss imaginable, Shinyribs remains funky fresh as he asks “Who Got My Natural Comb?” Hawkins’ widow, Elizabeth, and daughter Tina-Marie reach back to the songwriter’s earliest commercial release for a soulful rendition of the 1966 single “Baby,” expanding the musical essay to a time before Hawkins was “discovered” busking at Venice Beach. As with all tribute albums, these covers don’t substitute for Hawkins’ originals, but highlight his songwriter’s pen, and weave his memory into the folk tradition. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Adam Ant: The Blueblack Hussar

DVD_TheBlueblackBussarThe renewal of a rock ‘n’ roll survivor

1980s music fans will remember Adam Ant’s string of hits and a series of dandyish videos that dominated the early years of MTV. His New Romantic imagery was the studied creation of an artist, born from a love of history and a formal art school education, and a perfect fit for the New Wave era. His music combined the free spirit of punk rock with the poses of glam and the tribal wallop of twin drummers, and proved itself a surprisingly sturdy platform. Ant’s music career slowed down in the mid-80s, but his charisma and innate theatricality led to television, film and theater gigs that lasted out the ‘90s. But in 2002, troubling behavior that first cropped up in college returned with a vengeance, and in 2003, Ant was involuntarily “sectioned” for in-patient psychiatric care.

Ant discussed his bi-polar diagnosis in the documentary The Madness of Prince Charming, and again in his 2006 autobiography Stand & Deliver, but it wasn’t until four years later that he was sufficiently recovered to piece together a full artistic return. Legendary director Jack Bond documents that return in this 2013 cinema verite film, chronicling Ant assembling and rehearsing a new band, touring for the first time in fifteen years, and recording the album Adam Ant is The BlueBlack Hussar Marrying The Gunner’s Daughter. Along the way, the film reveals its subject as creative, intelligent, funny, hard-working and introspective. Viewers weaned on the MTV videos will come away with a much deeper appreciation of the thought and craft that went into Ant’s early work, and a feel for his continuing passion as an artist.

Along the road to re-emergence, Ant meets up with actress Charlotte Rampling, whose appearance in The Night Porter was a seminal early influence. He charms Rampling as they work together in the studio, just as he does artist Allen Jones, who has a connection to Ant (or more accurately, the pre-Ant, Stuart Goddard) of which he wasn’t even aware. Bond’s camera followed Ant for more than a year, capturing the frenetic energy of his return. The film doesn’t impose any context on the raw footage – no story setup for Ant’s return, no title slides identifying the guests; but there is an arc as Ant rehearses the band, publicizes his return, gigs his way up through smaller clubs, and emerges at the film’s end into the sunshine of Hyde Park and the welcome of an enormous festival audience.

Some fans have complained that the album capping this comeback was raw and underproduced, but the documentary makes evident that Ant is meticulous about everything he produces. If the album is raw, it’s because it was meant to be. Some of Ant’s new lyrics are coarse, and his music reaches back to the punk rock of his earliest work, but there isn’t even a hint of nostalgia to be heard. In his mid-50s Ant remains as magnetic and captivating as he was in his 20s, perhaps more so with the removal of MTV’s intermediation. The artistic drive that kept him upright as the original Ants were spirited away to form Bow Wow Wow continues to sustain him today; and in turn his energy sustains his fans, who turned out in droves for both his UK and US tours.

MVD’s 2015 DVD release augments the original documentary with bonus live performances of “Whip in My Valise,” “Young Parisians” (a duet with Boy George) and “Deutsche Girls”, along with a Q&A with the film’s director, Jack Bond. Longtime fans (who probably saw this film upon its theatrical release) will enjoy having this in their collection, but it’s the casual MTV fans who will really learn something new. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Adam Ant’s Home Page

Hank Williams Jr.: Hank Jr. Sings Hank Sr.

HankWilliamsJr_HankJrSingsHankSrA dozen covers gathered from Hank Jr.’s back catalog

Hank Jr. has paid tribute to his daddy’s work many times, starting with the 1963 soundtrack album Your Cheatin’ Heart (and Rhino’s 1998 reissue, Hank Williams, Jr. Sings Hank Williams, Sr.) and continuing with 1969’s Songs My Father Left Me, 1975’s Insights Into Hank Williams, 1993’s A Tribute to My Father, a handful of singles and album tracks, and even a series of Luke the Drifter, Jr. albums. This Cracker Barrel exclusive gathers a dozen covers, ranging from the ghostly father-son duet of the opening “There’s a Tear in My Beer,” to a concert mashup of Jr’s “Family Tradition” with Senior’s “Hey, Good Lookin,” to the 1986 hit “Mind Your Own Business” with Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Reverend Ike. The songs are classics, the voices solid, and the productions modern. It’s nothing revelatory, but it’s lively and engaging, and a nice set for fans of the Williams. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Hank Williams Jr.’s Home Page

Tommy Emmanuel: It’s Never Too Late

TommyEmmanuel_ItsNeverTooLateExtraordinary solo fingerstyle acoustic guitar

Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel is a magician. On his first solo all-acoustic album in more than a decade, he shows off the precision, dexterity and soulfulness that earned him one of five “Certified Guitar Player” titles bestowed by Chet Atkins. Emmanuel picks lead, rhythm chords and bass so seamlessly that his solo recordings often sound like multiple guitars. Rather than reducing his original compositions and reimagined covers to fit a single set of strings, his playing expands to orchestrate the songs. He picks the R&B “One Mint Julep” as a slow blues, with his percussive chords backing surprising turns in the lead. He adds Spanish flair to “El Vaquero,” paints a Western sunset in “The Duke,” and salutes Chet Atkins with “The Bug.” Emmanuel is a virtuoso in the truest sense of the word, a skilled artist whose technical mastery never overshadows his expression. [©2015 Hyperbolium]

Tommy Emmanuel’s Home Page