Tag Archives: Collectors’ Choice

Paul Revere & The Raiders featuring Mark Lindsay: The Complete Columbia Singles

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Terrific 3-CD anthology of underappreciated powerhouse

Pacific Northwest powerhouse Paul Revere & the Raiders seem to have been lost in shadow of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets and the hundreds of garage-rock compilations that followed in its wake. They aren’t exactly a secret, having recorded for Columbia, scoring fifteen Top 40 singles, garnering a feature spot on Where the Action Is and hosting their own shows, Happening ’68 and It’s Happening. But neither are they afforded the recognition their hits, B-sides, album cuts and live performances really earned. Perhaps it was the genesis of their stardom in Southern California or their major label association that kept them from garage band legend. Maybe it was the themed costumes – particularly the three-corner hats – or that vocalist Mark Lindsay had a soulful finesse which went beyond the typical garage-punk snot. Or maybe it’s that their run into the mid-70s outlasted their roots. Whatever it was, it’s left the Raiders rich catalog remembered only by a few high-charting hits.

The Raiders’ garage and frat-rock credentials were minted on a string of indie singles, and a recording of rock ‘n’ roll’s national anthem, “Louie, Louie,” that was laid down only a few weeks after the Kingsmen’s. The Raiders version bubbled under the Top 100, and along with the Wailers’ earlier version helped root the song in the Pacific Northwest. Picked up by Columbia the single had a good helping of regional success before Columbia A&R honcho Mitch Miller scuttled it. The group’s original follow-up “Louie-Go Home” sounds more like a grungy take on Otis Blackwell’s “Daddy Rolling Stone,” than a riff on Richard Berry’s original, and once again only managed to grazed the bottom of the Billboard chart. These early single, fueled by Lindsay’s fat saxophone tone and covers of R&B tunes “Night Train” and “Have Love, Will Travel,” weren’t as raw as the Sonics, but were still a lot meatier than most of their L.A., Chicago or Northeast counterparts.

“Louie, Louie,” originally released on the Sande label, turned out to be the Raiders ticket to the big time: a deal with Columbia Records. The group continued to crank out R&B covers for the next year, including a fuzz-heavy cover of Gene Thomas’ country-tinged “Sometimes” and a solid take on the Aaron Neville hit “Over You.” The group’s original were initially limited to B-sides, such as the instrumental “Swim,” but in 1965 the Lindsay/Revere composition “Steppin’ Out” began the group’s assault on the charts. Revere’s organ riffs and a confrontational lyric gave this single a tougher garage sound that took them just shy of the Top 40. A short-lived detour into Jan & Dean-styled car songs (“SS396” b/w “Corvair Baby”) was followed by a trifecta of the group’s best remembered hits.

First up was “Just Like Me,” with a wickedly insinuating organ riff, a brilliant double guitar solo, and a vocal that rises from barely contained verses to emotionally explosive choruses. Next was Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s anti-drug “Kicks,” turned down by the Animals and taken to #4 by the Raiders. Lindsay really sells the song, singing the lyric as both a lecture and a plea, forceful on the verses and understanding in the choruses. The group cracked the Top 10 again with another Mann & Weil tune, “Hungry,” propelled by its hypnotically powerful bass line. The group (with Terry Melcher) subsequently began writing many of their own hits and B-sides, including “Good Thing,” “Him or Me,” and “Ups and Downs,” and Melcher began adding studio musicians to the mix.

As 1967 turned into 1968 the band stretched from their Northwest rock roots into sunshine pop, bubblegum, folk rock, soul and light-psych. Fine sides from this period include the Beatle-esque “Too Much Talk,” the groovy theme songs “Happening ‘68” and “It’s Happening,” and the chewy “Cinderella Sunshine” and “Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon.” The latter two are among the sides Lindsey produced for the band after their separation from Terry Melcher and the arrival of three replacement Raiders with Southern roots. By the end of the 1960s the group’s singles were charting lower, often outside the Top 40, but their quality never dipped, and the advent of stereo releases (with 1969’s “We Gotta All Get Together”) finally detached their sound from the monophonic thrash of their Northwest roots.

Their success was renewed in 1971 with a cover of John D. Loudermilk’s “Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian),” a song that had been recorded a decade earlier by Marvin Rainwater and with some commercial success by Don Fardon. The Raiders’ version topped the singles charts – their only #1 – and sold a million copies. The renewed success was brief however: a follow-up cover of Joe South’s “Birds of a Feather” just missed the Top 20, and their next four singles charted lower and lower, ending their run with 1973’s barely charting pre-disco “Love Music.” The group’s contract with Columbia ended in 1975, lead singer Mark Lindsay left for a solo career, and though the group soldiered on with sporadic new releases they became more of a fixture on the oldies circuit.

Collectors’ Choice’s 3-CD set offers sixty-six tracks that cover all of the group’s Columbia singles. The B-sides offer some real treats, including the autobiographical “The Legend of Paul Revere,” the Las Vegas grind-styled instrumental “B.F.D.R.F. Blues,” the flower-power “Do Unto Others,” the trippy “Observations from Flight 285 (in 3/4 Time),” the muscular jam “Without You,” the Band-styled country-rock “I Don’t Know,” the Peter & Gordon-ish “Frankford Side Street,” and the organ instrumental “Terry’s Tune.” There are four rarities: the withdrawn “Rain, Sleet, Snow” and its flip “Brotherly Love,” and promo songs for the GTO (“Judge GTO Breakaway”) and a Mattel doll (“Song for Swingy”). The collection closes with the post-Mark Lindsay “Your Love (is the Only Love),” featuring Bob Wooley on lead vocal. Missing are the group’s pre-Columbia singles, including their boogie-woogie instrumentals “Beatnik Sticks” and “Like, Long Hair,” and their last single “Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong.”

This recitation of the group’s Columbia singles hits most of the group’s highlights, but with fourteen LPs to their credit there are some worthy album cuts missing, such as their pre-Monkees version of “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.” That said, this is a superb document of the band’s evolution from Northwest powerhouse into a group that could finesse pop, rock, folk, soul and R&B sounds. Their singles were of an unusually consistent quality, and the group’s ability to chart new directions while retaining the heart of their original identity is truly impressive. For most listeners the group’s name will evoke only one or two of these hits, but as eleven years of singles reveal, there was a whole lot more to Paul Revere and the Raiders than three-corner hats and Northwest garage. [©2010-2012 hyperbolium dot com]

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Alice Cooper: DaDa

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Alice Cooper’s last album for Warner Brothers

By 1983 Alice Cooper had fallen back off the wagon and was recording albums that he’d later claim he couldn’t remember. 1981’s Special Forces had brought him back to a stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll sound that recalled his earlier peaks, and 1982’s Zipper Catches Skin retained the same direction while sounding more labored. 1983’s DaDa, his last album for Warner Brothers (and his last album before a three-year hiatus) reunited him with Bob Ezrin, who’d produced Cooper in his glory years. The album opens promisingly with the menacing “Da,” a looming synthesizer instrumental punctured by thumps of percussion and a spooky doll’s voice. The spoken word lyrics sound as if they’re snippets of confessional dialog lifted from a 1940s psychological thriller.

The doll’s eerie “da-da” vocalizations point to the album’s family themes, with a teenage son calling out his abusive father on “Enough’s Enough,” and the family’s dark human secret essayed in “Former Lee Warmer.” There’s a not-quite-heartwarming story of a shopping mall Santa, the Devo-esque dizziness of “Dyslexia,” and the over-the-top patriotism of “I Love America.” Whatever else Alice Cooper was doing (or drinking) his sense of humor never left him. On the darker theatrical side are the dominatrix sister duo and middle-eastern flourishes of “Scarlet and Sheba,” the vampire horror of “Fresh Blood,” and the alcoholic nightmare “Pass the Gun Around” that closes a chapter in Cooper’s career. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic reissue includes a four-panel booklet that features new liner notes by Gene Sculatti, but no bonus tracks. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Alice Cooper: Zipper Catches Skin

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Alice Cooper sounding a bit labored in 1982

A year after the stripped-down attack of Special Forces, Alice Cooper produced another album in the same vein; though this time with added theatrical flair and the return of guitarist Dick Wagner. Cooper continued to assume new identities, such as the famed swordsman of “Zorro’s Ascent” and the put-upon son of “Make That Money (Scrooge’s Song).” Some of the performances seem labored, and Wagner’s distinctive guitar riffs feel as if they were grafted onto the songs to add flash. The stagey ballad “I Am the Future” might have worked well as a production number, but with Cooper descending back into alcohol addiction there was no tour. What works well is Cooper’s humor on “No Baloney Homosapiens,” “I Like Girls” and “Remarkably Insincere.” And on “Tag, You’re It” he indulges his longtime love of cheesy cinema with a song full of slasher-film clichés. If there was no 1970s legacy with which to compare this, one might stumble upon this and think it’s a long-lost power-pop album from a surprisingly talented lyricist. It’s all quite listenable, and even fun as it passes by, but it’s not nearly as memorable as his earlier (and some of his later) works. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic reissue adds the UK-only 1982 single “For Britain Only,” and its four-panel booklet includes new liner notes by Gene Sculatti. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Alice Cooper: Special Forces

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Alice Cooper stripped of his late-70s bombast

Nearly a decade after the original Alice Cooper band broke through with School’s Out, and five years after the solo Alice Cooper re-emerged with Welcome to My Nightmare and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell some retooling was in order. Cooper’s albums of the late 70s had become bombastic, and his 1980 release Flush the Fashion mistakenly embraced a modern-rock sound that failed him. By 1981 he was ready to recapture his earlier glory. Gone were the new wave synthesizers brought by Roy Thomas Baker and back were guitar, bass and drums to give punch to Cooper’s tough singing. What synths remain were slithering and insinuating, or in the case of those which introduce “Seven and Seven Is,” quickly pushed aside by slashing rhythm guitars. Covering this Love song was a canny tip of the hat to punk-rock’s mid-60s garage-rock roots.

This isn’t a full one-eighty from Flush the Fashion, but in the punk rock movement Cooper had clearly found kindred confrontational spirits. His then-current preoccupation with military and police matters provides the album’s major lyrical strand, though it’s set to the sort of clever wordplay that had made his earlier hits and stage show so alluring. The accoutrements of power and forces – guns, ammo, holsters – are dressed-up in suggestive sexual double-entendres that leave their meaning to the listener’s imagination. Cooper revisits “Generation Landslide” (from 1973’s Billion Dollar Babies) without the finesse of the original, and at times, such as on “Don’t Talk Old to Me,” Cooper sounds like a ranting alcoholic, which was apparently a real-life role into which he was about to lapse. Cooper’s secondary fascination with horror films is highlighted in the ornate “Skeletons in the Closet,” on which trades the raw rock ‘n’ roll for synthesizers and spooky imagery.

None of this content generated a social shock or commercial reaction in 1981, but either did it sound out of time. The staccato rhythm of “You’re a Movie” may be tied to the new wave sounds of early MTV, but there’s enough muscle in the band’s playing to keep this from being completely dated. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic CD reissue adds “Look at You Over There, Ripping the Sawdust From My Teddybear,” a song Cooper trimmed from the original vinyl release. Its electric piano and funky rhythm do indeed sound out of context, but it fits lyrically and fans will be happy to get this extra period track. The disc is delivered in a standard jewel case with a four panel insert that includes new liner notes by Gene Sculatti. This isn’t Alice Cooper at his pinnacle, but neither is it the sound of a one-time enfant terrible simply hanging on. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

B.J. Thomas: Most of All / Billy Joe Thomas

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Thomas parts ways with Chips Moman and Memphis

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

After out-of-the-gate success with Huey Meaux in Texas, four albums and a hit singles with Chips Moman in Memphis, and a Los Angeles-based chart-topper with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, by the start of the 1970s B.J. Thomas was once again on the move. His 1970 release Most of All includes a few finished tracks recorded with Moman at American Studios, but also includes a stop in Atlanta and finally settles in at Doraville, Alabama’s Studio One. Here Thomas connected with producer Buddy Buie and the studio players who would form the Atlanta Rhythm Section. This new setting produced two hits, “Most of All” and “No Love at All,” both Top 40 pop and Top 5 adult contemporary. The former was written by Buie, the latter reunited Thomas with songwriter Wayne Carson, suggesting the track might have been started in Memphis.

Buie’s instrumentation wasn’t terrifically different than Moman’s, featuring guitars, bass and drums augmented by strings and horns. But Buie’s productions are smoother and not as deep in the soul-funk pocket as had been laid down in Memphis. Thomas responded by modulating his vocals with longer notes that edge into crooning. The material follows the familiar course of a few originals and cover songs that fit Thomas snugly enough to leave little leaving room for musical reinvention; James Taylor’s early “Rainy Day Man,” The Carpenters’ “Close to You,” and Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia,” don’t add much to the originals. Neither does a cover of Mann & Weil’s controversial song of interracial romance, “Brown Eyed Woman,” which had scored on the coasts for Bill Medley.

The following year Thomas made another leap, recording in New York City, Los Angeles and Nashville, with Steve Tyrell and Al Gorgoni producing Billy Joe Thomas. Thomas continued to chart higher on the adult contemporary chart than the pop list, topping the former with the gorgeous “Rock ‘n’ Roll Lullaby.” The single’s Beach Boys-styled backing vocals lift Thomas as he stretches into falsetto and adds a new style to his catalog. Paul Williams’ “That’s What Friends Are For” (not to be confused with Burt Bacharach’s similarly titled song that was a hit for Dionne Warwick) revisits the Billy Joel inflections Thomas brought to 1968’s “Mr. Businessman,” and “Happier Than the Morning Sun” is given a sunnier, lighter arrangement than Stevie Wonder’s later recording.

For this last album on Scepter, Tyrell engaged the songs’ writers to perform, a plan that paralleled the emergence of singer-songwriters as a marketable quantity. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams played and sang on their tunes, and guests included Duane Eddy, Darlene Love and Dave Somerville of ‘50s vocal group, The Diamonds. Tyrell and Gorgoni created the most consistent album to that point in Thomas’ career, seamlessly knitting together pop, blues and soul, while picking up songs from favorite sources Wayne Carson and Mark James alongside the famous singer-songwriters. Thomas shows himself ready for serious lyrics, including the terrific call-to-action “We Have Got to Get Our Ship Together” and John Sebastian’s “The Stories We Can Tell.” Pete Drake’s pedal steel on the latter all but pointed the way to Thomas’ future on the country charts.

Collectors’ Choice adds three bonus tracks to the original albums: a single and two B-sides of which the gospel “Mighty Clouds of Joy” makes the most lasting impression. All tracks are stereo, and the set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. These albums find Thomas searching for direction after leaving Memphis and finding new confidence in New York City. He’d hook up with Paramount the following year, score an across-the-board success with “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” with ABC in 1975, and top the country charts in the mid-80s, leaving Billy Joe Thomas to stand as a fitting end to his run with Sceptor. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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B.J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head / Everybody’s Out of Town

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Thomas tops the charts with Bacharach and David

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

By the time Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head was released in 1969 Thomas had already recorded two Top-10 hits (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Hooked on a Feeling”) and a handful of lower-charting sides. But one hit was a Hank Williams cover and the other subsequently rehomed as a #1 hit for Blue Swede, it was this album’s Bacharach-David title tune that became Thomas’ long-term calling card. The Bacharach-David produced “Raindrops” is a departure in sound from the records Thomas had been making with Chips Moman in Memphis. The ukulele that opens the arrangement immediately announces something different, and Thomas’ delivery is softened along with horns that are Los Angeles smooth rather than Memphis punchy. Two other Bacharach-David productions, “Little Green Apples” and “This Guy’s in Love With You” feature similarly sophisticated pop arrangements.

The album has three tracks produced by Chips Moman, including a cover of Mark James’ “Suspicious Minds.” Moman reused Elvis’ backing track, but remixed in a way that turns the King into a ghost; the arrangement’s extended vocal coda is a great addition. Also good is a soulful take on Jimmy Webb’s “Do What You Gotta Do,” and the Mark James original “Mr. Mailman.” Four tracks produced by Stan Green and Scepter’s A&R head Steve Tyrell fill out the song list, highlighted by a take on “The Greatest Love” that’s musical but too brash to capture the vulnerability of Joe South’s original or Aaron Neville’s cover. The patchwork of three production teams makes this album feel more constructed than Thomas’ two previous outings. There are terrific individual tracks here, but the different album sections feel stitched together and leave Thomas searching for a signature identity.

Following a greatest hits album in early 1970, Thomas returned with Everybody’s Out of Town. The commercial success of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” carried over, as he launched two more singles onto the Top 40 and found great success on the adult contemporary chart, topping it with “I Just Can’t Help Believing.” Bacharach and David returned to produce a pair of tracks, but their strings, horns and old-timey piano stick out like sore thumbs in sequence with Chip Moman’s Memphis sound. Mark James and Wayne Carson once again contributed songs, and Thomas picked covers that fit well, even if he didn’t find anything revelatory to say with “Everybody’s Talkin’” or “What Does it Take.” Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was a great pick for the American Studios sound and Thomas sings it with soul.

Collectors’ Choice adds five bonus tracks: two singles, a greatest hits album track and two previously unreleased sides. Best among these is the previously unissued country arrangement of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s “There’s No Holding You” and a horn- and organ-filled take on Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It.” This album is a more consistent effort than the previous Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, but Thomas no longer seemed to be progressing under Moman’s direction. Like the preceding album the cover songs and some of the originals feel like album filler. All tracks are stereo, and the set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. These first-time-on-CD albums offer some of Thomas’ biggest hits, supplemented by fine album tracks and filler. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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B.J. Thomas: On My Way / Young and in Love

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Texas pop hit-maker finds his soul in Memphis

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

After his 1966 breakthrough with a slow, pop-soul cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” Thomas’ subsequent singles charted lower and lower, dropping him out of the Top 40 for the latter half of 1966 and all of 1967. He returned in 1968 with On My Way and climbed back to #28 with the mid-tempo love song “The Eyes of a New York Woman.” Thomas was singing in a lower register, sounding remarkably like the Box Tops’ Alex Chilton; the single’s electric sitar even recalls the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby.” That same sitar shines even more brightly opening the album’s breakout hit, “Hooked on a Feeling.” This Mark James penned number subsequently scored a European hit for Jonathan King and a U.S. #1 in 1974 for Blue Swede. King added (and Blue Swede copied) an “ooga chaka” chant and reggae rhythm that give the song a harder edge than Thomas original.

By the time Thomas recorded this pair of albums he’d relocated from Texas to Memphis where he landed at Chips Moman’s American Studio, meeting up with the studuio’s crack band and realizing crisper recordings and more commercially refined arrangements. More importantly, his previous source of original songs, Mark Charron, was replaced by a range of writers that included Ray Stevens, Wayne Carson (who wrote “Soul Deep” and “The Letter” for the Box Tops), Spooner Oldham, Ashford & Simpson, and Mark James (who wrote both singles, and would later write “Suspicious Minds” for Elvis to cut in the very same Memphis studio). Thomas continued to tread a line between pop, country, blues and soul, but the first and last resonated most deeply in his new Memphis setting.

As on his previous albums, Thomas turned a country classic to soul, this time with Ferlin Husky’s mid-50s hit, “Gone.” Since the original was already a ballad, Thomas and crew could only slow it so much and instead focused on a then-contemporary arrangement of reverb and fuzz guitar, strings, deep bass and soulful organ; it all ends up sounding a bit funereal. Better are horn-and-string covers of Jim Reeves’ “Four Walls” and the Platters’ “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” each giving Thomas a chance to really emote. Thomas’ material was notably more mature than his earlier work and reaches to social commentary (and Billy Joel-like stridency) with “Mr. Businessman” and philosophical introspection on “I’ve Been Down This Road Before.” The singer, songs, studio and musicians really fit together nicely for these sessions, but the dependency on covers that fail to expand on the originals keeps this album from being a deeper artistic statement.

1969’s Young and in Love followed the template of its predecessor, combining tunes from Mark James with selections from songwriting legends (Paul Williams, Jimmy Webb, Neil Diamond), and a country hit turned to soul with a cover of Henson Cargill’s “Skip a Rope.” Unlike Thomas’ previous (and next) album, the original material here was good, but failed to burn up the charts: the pop-soul “Pass the Apple Eve” barely made the Top 100, and the ballad “It’s Only Love” only cracked the adult contemporary Top 40. The covers are professional, but again not always artistically definitive; the Carpenters wrenched much more out of “Hurting Each Other” a few years later, and “Solitary Man” didn’t improve on Neil Diamond’s original. Thomas’ connection with the Box Tops is renewed through a cover of Spooner Oldham & Dan Penn’s “I Pray for Rain,” which Chilton and company had recorded a few years earlier.

Chips Moman’s studio and players continue to provide superb accompaniment, furthering Thomas development as a soul singer. The electric sitar wears thin by album’s end, but for the arrangements mostly have a timeless Memphis sound. Collectors’ Choice adds six bonus tracks: a single, three B-sides and two previously unreleased sides. Top of the heap is a cover of Conway Twitty’s (and Wanda Jackson’s) “I May Never Get to Heaven” featuring superb guitar from Reggie Young. Also tasty is a cover of Luther Dixon’s blue “Human” and the airy Mark James waltz “Distant Carolina.” Creepiest is “You Don’t Love Me Anymore,” ending with a frenetic vocal and a railroad train (complete with sound effects) bearing down on the dreaming protagonist. All tracks are stereo except 22, and “I Saw Pity in the Face of a Friend” features some odd panning and phasing. The set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. These first-time-on-CD albums offer a great picture of Thomas’ emergence as a soul singer. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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B.J. Thomas: I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry / Tomorrow Never Comes

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Future chart-topper warms up with country, soul and blues

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

1966’s I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry reprised the title song with which Thomas reached #8 on the charts as the lead singer of the Houston-based Triumphs. Thomas re-imagines Hank Williams’ country classic as pop-soul with slow, measured vocals underlined by a mournful organ, low bass and drums lightly counting out the waltz time. A falling horn line at the end of each verse adds some Stax flavor, and the song’s heartbreak is brought to a head in the anguished wails with which Thomas takes the song out. He takes Williams’ “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight” similarly down-tempo, with a harpsichord in place of organ, a guitar carrying the blues and Jordanaires-styled backing vocals adding their moan.

Thomas proved himself a fetching blue-soul singer on the jukebox themed “The Titles Tell” and adds punch to a cover of “Midnight Hour” with horns, handclaps and female backing singers. The album spun off a minor hit in Mark Charron’s sentimental original “Mama,” and his other titles, though a bit maudlin in tearjerkers like “I Wonder” and “Bring Back the Time,” are good vehicles for Thomas. There’s frat-rock energy in “Wendy,” a pre-Beatles boy-singer pop melody in “Terri,” and a Texicali-tinge to “Maria.” Thomas also sang covers of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” and Freddie Scott’s “Hey Girl,” mostly following the originals but adding a distinctive touch with his vocal tone.

Thomas followed up the same year with the album Tomorrow Never Comes. The track list once again includes a slow, soulful pass at a country legend’s song, this time building Ernest Tubb’s “Tomorrow Never Comes” to a show-stopping crescendo. Mark Charron once again supplies most of the originals, this time writing about the supercharged emotions of teenagers and young adults. The little known “Plain Jain” is the story of a lonely girl who kills herself after falling for a prank prom invitation; though only charting to #129, it’s a worthy entry in the death-song genre. Charron captures the end-of-the-world melodrama of found love, broken hearts, friendlessness, failure and occasional moments of self realization, youthful optimism and redemption.

Thomas’ style was all over the map at these early points in his career, crooning, rocking and emoting atop pop, soul, blues and country arrangements of guitar, bass, drums, strings and horns. Those horns come to the fore on a rousing cover of Timmy Shaw’s “Gonna Send You Back to Georgia,” and the album closes with the fine, bluesy frat-rocker, “Candy Baby.” Collectors’ Choice adds two bonus B-sides, the countrypolitan kiss-off “Your Tears Leave Me Cold” and a torchy cover of Robert Thibodeux’s “I’m Not a Fool Anymore.” All tracks are stereo except 1, 2, 8, 21 and 24, and the set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. Making their first appearances on CD, these are two great places to start an appreciation of Thomas that extends deeper than his well-known hits. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Waylon Jennings: Waylon / Singer of Sad Songs

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Waylon Jennings starts to dig in his heels

By the time Waylon and Singer of Sad Songs were released in 1970, a number of things had changed in RCA’s approach to recording Waylon Jennings. Chet Atkins had turned production over to Danny Davis, with whom Jennings was more able and willing to butt heads, and by the second album, Jennings’ Phoenix compatriot Lee Hazlewood was brought in to replace Davis. Jennings himself had shown sparks of independence from Nashville’s way of doing things on his previous couple of albums, but here he stretches ever further, picking classic and new rock ‘n’ roll songs and material from Mickey Newbury, Tom Rush, and Tim Hardin. Nashville and the general music industry had changed as well, with lusher productions starting to give way to singer-songwriters whose voice and songs were made the central focus.

Unfortunately these changes didn’t immediately lead to the radical changes Jennings would introduce a couple years later, and winning songs like Liz Anderson’s “Yes, Virginia” are still infiltrated by background cooing and over-arranged answer vocals. On the other hand, Jennings opens Waylon with “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” a 1956 Chuck Berry song that had been a 1956 R&B hit on the Chicago-based Chess label. He apparently knew which way the musical winds were blowing as the single charted to #3. Jennings lets fly his abilities to sing tender folk and pained blues, with the bass and drums occasionally matching his assertiveness. Mickey Newbury’s “The Thirty Third of August” has a fantastic arrangement of acoustic guitar, high-string bass, drums, organ and strings; this sounds little like Nashville product and carries the song’s heavy lyrics. The album is uneven and dated by dabs of electric sitar, but it was the most satisfying statement of Jennings direction to that date.

Jennings’ third album for RCA in 1970, Singer of Sad Songs, was waxed over three days in Los Angeles with fellow former-Phoenician Lee Hazlewood and a few West Coast musicians. Hazlewood had just come off releasing the International Submarine Band’s Safe at Home on his LHI label, so he was in a better position to understand Jennings’ new ideas than the RCA staff in Nashville. The album’s only hit, and the only track produced by RCA’s Danny Davis, is the title song, which stopped short of the Top 10 at #12. Much better are a spirited cover of Chris Kenner’s 1957 “Sick and Tired” that trades the originals New Orleans R&B bounce for Jennings’ merger of country, folk, rock and soul. He covers the Louvin Brothers’ “Must You Throw Dirt in My Face” and the vintage “Ragged But Right,” and picks several contemporary folk songs. Jennings sounds relaxed and plugged in to his song choices, though his cover of the Rolling Stones “Honky Tonk Woman” feels forced and slightly off the mark.

Both albums, but particularly Singer of Sad Songs, are the statements of a musician born to the early West Texas rock ‘n’ roll of Buddy Holly, developed in the bars of Arizona, and steeped in country classics. Though he’d yet to fully break free of RCA and Nashville’s restrained way of doing things, his song selections planted the seeds of what was to come. Waylon appears to have been previously reissued on the American Beat label, but is no longer in print. Singer of Sad Songs makes its domestic CD debut here, providing an answer to the question “what album features a duet between Waylon Jennings and Lee Hazlewood?” Collectors’ Choice’s two-fer includes an eight-page booklet with full-panel reproductions of both album covers – front and back – and new liner notes by Colin Escott. This is a great way to introduce yourself to Jennings’ budding outlaw years. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Waylon Jennings: Love of the Common People / Hangin’ On

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Transitional mid-60s albums from Waylon Jennings

This pair of RCA albums, Love of the Common People from 1967 and Hangin’ On from 1968, finds Waylon Jennings in an artistic middle-ground between earlier work controlled by RCA staff producers and his later independence. Producer Chet Atkins still keeps the tempos and volume staid, the production clean and the backing choruses smooth, but Jennings pushes on the instrumentation and song choices, and often sings with a huskier, more emotive voice than previously heard. Though the approach has its successes, in many cases it’s neither fish nor fowl; neither the carefully manicured sound of Atkins, nor the free-style rock-energized country of Jennings’ outlaw period.

Love of the Common People didn’t launch any hit singles, though there were several tracks that could have been successful. The B-side title song has a rich history, having been recorded as pop, R&B, reggae and brought to its greatest prominence as synthpop by Paul Young in the 1980s. The lyric of poverty, family, hope and faith is lifted higher and higher by four key modulations and memorable horn stabs. Mel Tillis’ “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” would be a worldwide for Kenny Rogers, but here it’s misproduced with a sprightly acoustic guitar and cooing female chorus that fail to convey the lyric’s heartbreaking desperation. There are many fine album sides, including Jim Glaser’s clear-eyed opener “Money Cannot Make the Man,” Jennings late-50s composition “Young Widow Brown,” and Ted Harris’ wounded folk-song, “The Road.” Jennings oversings the Beatles’ “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and the saccharine pop chorus on “Don’t Waste Your Time” suggests why he had to get out of Chet Atkins’ grip.

Hangin’ On gave Jennings his biggest single to-date with Harlan Howard’s “The Chokin’ Kind,” setting up a string of five Top 10’s stretching through 1968. The version that was released to the public was actually a re-recording, waxed after Jennings expressed his displeasure with the Harlan Howard/Jerry Reed produced original. The original version was released decades later on Bear Family’s The Journey: Destiny’s Child. With each album Jennings’ artistic convictions were getting stronger, as the broad range of material recorded here indicates. Songs from Roy Orbison, Bobby Bare and Roger Miller are complemented by little-known originals. Orbison’s “The Crowd” retains its overwrought operatic drama and sounds more like an Orbison cover rather than a Jennings performance, but Jennings’ own “Julie” provides a subtle flipside to Porter Waggoner’s “Rubber Room” in its portrait of self-inflicted romantic destruction and madness.

Love of the Common People was reissued by Buddha in 1999, but has been available only for digital download the past few years. The original CD reissue’s bonus track “Walk on Out of My Mind” is dropped from this two-fer. Hangin’ On makes its domestic CD debut here. Collectors’ Choice’s two-fer includes an eight-page booklet with full-panel reproductions of both album covers – front and back – and new liner notes by Colin Escott. You can find this same material, and a whole lot more, on Bear Family’s The Journey: Destiny’s Child, but unless you’re planning to soak up Jennings’ entire catalog, this domestic two-fer is the best way to introduce yourself to Jennings’ pre-outlaw years. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]