Tag Archives: Cover Songs

Yep: Once

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Loving covers album from a Rubinoo and a Belleville

Though Jon Rubin and Tommy Dunbar, the two remaining founders of the Rubinoos, often refer to Al Chan as “the new guy,” he’s entering his fourth decade of playing and singing with the band. His partner in Yep is the singer, songwriter and guitarist Mark Caputo of the pop-meets-Americana band Belleville. Together they’ve lovingly recorded an eclectic collection of ten cover songs (and one Caputo original), ranging from hit singles by Elton John (“Rocket Man”), the Kinks (“Waterloo Sunset”), and the Everly Brothers “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad),” to lesser-known titles by deeply respected songwriters that include Richard Buckner, Alan Wauters and Justin Currie. Ironically, the indie nature of this album makes the better-known songs the more daring picks, challenging Chan and Caputo to find original approaches to chestnuts. Happily, the duo is quite up to the task.

“Rocket Man” retains the dramatic build from a quiet intro to a rock ‘n’ roll finish, but John’s bluesy piano is replaced here with the singer-songwriter strum of acoustic guitars, and Yep’s bass-drums-guitar and duet vocals are heavier, embellished by spacey flourishes of Dave Zirbel’s steel. “Waterloo Sunset” is sung in close harmony to acoustic guitars, giving the song a more melancholy end-of-the-day vibe than the signature single, and “So Sad,” though sticking closely to the Everly’s harmony style, replaces the original’s tremolo guitar with steel, creating a deeper country feel. It’s particularly great to hear Don Everly’s songwriting highlighted in the company of both commercial legends and underground heroes (and a bit of both with Jeff Tweedy’s melody applied to Woody Guthrie’s “Hesitating Beauty”).

The uncertainty and yearning of the hits also flows through the insular world of Justin Currie’s “Make it Always Too Late,” the uneasily accepted inevitability of Teiture’s “Sleeping with the Lights On,” and the tearstained power-pop heartbreak of Joe Pernice’s “Crestfallen” (note to self: check out the Pernice Brothers’ 1998 debut, Overcome by Happiness). Producer John Cuniberti balances the clarity of modern recording with the warmth of DIY; on “Noise and Confusion,” for example, the track retains the thick center of Alan Wauters’ original, but the voices and instruments are given more definition than Wauters’ muddier production. Singing together, Chan and Caputo give these covers a fresh voice while drawing lines back to the originals’ legacies; they’re respectful but not slavish, just as fine covers should be. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Various Artists: Blue Moon of Kentucky – Instrumental Tribute to Bill Monroe

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Instrumental tribute to the Father of Bluegrass

Mike Scott leads an all-star line-up, including Adam Steffey, Bryan Sutton, Rob Ickes, Aubrey Haynie, Mike Compton, Tim Stafford and Ben Isaacs, on this instrumental tribute to the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe. Twelve of these tracks were previously released as a gift shop item on the Maple Street label, but with six additional performances and broader distribution from Rural Rhythm, this release welcomes the 100th anniversary year of Monroe’s birth. Shorn of bluegrass vocal harmonies, the instrumentalists have plenty of room to solo, and they do so with great finesse. There’s some requisite hot picking, but more interesting are the ballads and mid-tempo numbers on which the melodic beauty and subtle instrumental tones aren’t overwhelmed by frenetic tempos. The lazy fiddle that introduces “Blue Moon of Kentucky” gives way to some fine mid-tempo playing, “Kentucky Waltz” is as relaxed and warm as an outdoor summer’s dance, and Scott, Ickes and Haynie trade wonderfully slow, lost-in-thought solos on “Precious Memories.” This is a sweet tribute to the musical roots of bluegrass and a fitting marker for Bill Monroe’s hundredth birthday anniversary. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Simon and Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water (40th Anniversary Edition)

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Brilliant video additions to Simon & Garfunkel’s studio swan song

Simon and Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album marked their commercial peak. Though many fans find the previous album, Bookends, to be the apex of the duo’s artistic creativity, it’s hard to think of another pop act that exited with a success comparable to this album and its title track. Despite Garfunkel’s initial reservation, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” made good on Simon’s feeling that it was the best song he’d ever written, topping the Hot 100 for six weeks and winning Grammy awards for song and record of the year. Though the recording is deeply tied to Garfunkel’s brilliant vocal performance, the composition spawned dozens of successful covers, including Aretha Franklin’s Grammy-winning R&B chart-topper and Buck Owens’ Top 10 single. In the 1970s it became a staple in Elvis Presley’s stage show, and cover versions continue to be recorded to this day, with a live version from the 2010 Grammys having charted, and the television show Glee having featured the song the same year.

But the title song is far from the album’s only jewel. With Garfunkel away for the better part of 1969 filming Catch 22, Simon was left to work alone, and apparently consider a post-Garfunkel career. “The Only Living Boy in New York City” and “Why Don’t You Write Me” are easily heard to be contemplations of Simon’s isolation, while “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” includes the telling lyric “so long Frank Lloyd Wright, all of the nights we harmonized ‘til dawn,” an allusion seemingly tied to Garfunkel’s study of architecture at Columbia. The seeds of Simon’s multicultural solo career can be heard in the Peruvian flute of “El Condor Pasa (If I Could),” broad rhythm instrumentation of “Cecilia,” and reggae styling of “Why Don’t You Write Me.” The album topped the chart, won Grammys for engineering, arranging and Album of Year, and spun off four hit singles.

This CD/DVD set marks the 40th anniversary of the album’s January 1970 release, and combines the original eleven tracks with two hours of video material. The DVD includes the duo’s rare 1969 CBS television special, Songs of America, and a new documentary, The Harmony Game: The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The special, aired only once on November 30, 1969, has been bootlegged many times, but never before officially reissued. At the time of its airing its social and political viewpoints – particularly its explicit anti-Vietnam war messages – caused sponsor Bell Atlantic to pull out. But with backing from CBS (the same network that had fired the Smothers Brothers earlier in the year), the program found a new sponsor (Alberto Culver, the makers of Alberto VO5) and was aired uncut.

Both video features are extraordinary documents. The 1969 special, originally shot on film and pieced together from two different sources, is a post-Woodstock look at America in which Simon and Garfunkel seem to be trying to explain the younger generation to adult viewers. They surface the questions and doubts on the minds of many young people in 1969, starting with the incalculable loss of the decade’s heroes – JFK, MLK and RFK – and reflections on the brutality of poverty and the activism of the farm workers, UAW and Poor People’s March. First-time director (and future famous actor) Charles Grodin skillfully mixed compelling newsreel imagery with voiceovers and interviews, and interwove performance footage and behind-the-scenes shots of the duo at work. Simon and Garfunkel are spied working out arrangements of new songs, rehearsing their stage band and recording in the studio.

The making-of documentary repeats some moments from the ’69 special, but adds context with discussions of the program’s creation and controversies. There’s additional concert footage and contemporary interviews with Simon, Garfunkel, their manager, Mort Lewis, their engineer/producer, Roy Halee, and two of the studio players (drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Joe Osborn) featured on the album.. The conversation with Halee is particularly illuminating, as he describes how the duo’s studio sound was produced, and provides specifics of the album’s tracks. The song-by-song discussion reveals numerous details on personnel (Fred Carter Jr., for example, played guitar on “The Boxer,” Joe Osborn played an 8-string bass on “Only Living Boy in New York City,” and Larry Knechtel developed the gospel piano on “Bridge Over Troubled Water”), recording locations, production techniques, and brightly highlights the creativity everyone concerned poured into the album.

Missing from the CD are the bonus tracks (“Feuilles-O” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water (Demo Take 6)”) available on earlier releases, as well as the oft-bootlegged session track “Cuba Si, Nixon No,” but the video disc is priceless and a fantastic bonus to celebrate this album’s anniversary. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Perry Como: Seattle

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Easy listening vocalist rocks out, but only momentarily

Como’s 1969 LP opens with a number, “Happiness Comes, Happiness Goes,” that suggests the easy listening pop vocalist was late getting to a groovy party hosted by Esquivel. But after only one groovy concoction of fuzz guitars and organ, the album reverts to the light, warm pop that Mister C had been landing on the charts since the early 1940s. The album’s hit was a remake of “Seattle,” the theme to television’s Here Come the Brides. It’s upbeat harpsichord, organ and horns cracked the Top 40 and reached #2 on the adult contemporary chart. The album’s other period piece is “That’s All This Old World Needs,” whose optimism was a better fit for August’s Woodstock than December’s Altamont. Working with RCA staff producers Andy Wiswell and Chet Atkins, Como selected a range of material, including the Brothers Four’s melancholy hit, “Turnaround,” the cheery, Mitch Miller-y “Deep in Your Heart,” and the bluesy “Beady Eyed Buzzard.” Como also recorded a pair of tunes from the legendary Cindy Walker, and his work with Atkins in the famed “Nashville Sound” studio gives several tracks a pop-country feel. Como was perhaps the very easiest of easy listening vocalists, but the lack of pyrotechnics in his vocal style made records recorded in his late ‘50s as smoothly ingratiating as those waxed in his younger years. Don’t be fooled by the opening track, this is a solid easy-pop album with ‘60s pop-country colors. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Barney Kessel: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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Kessel reinterprets Mancini’s film soundtrack

Those seeking Barney Kessel’s legendary jazz stylings should look elsewhere. As a guitarist in the ‘50s, Kessel was renowned for his cool, bop-inspired playing in small quartets on sessions with the Contemporary label. But in the early ‘60s he signed with Reprise and embarked on a series of pop records. This was hardly new territory for Kessel, as he’d been backing pop musicians for years, and was a first-call guitarist for pop titans like Phil Spector; but as a front-man, this was a break from the jazz sessions he’d previously led. On his debut for Reprise, Kessel reinterpreted Henry Mancini’s soundtrack for Breakfast at Tiffany’s with a septet that included the superb playing of Paul Horn on saxophone and flute. This is a fair distance from the harder jazz Kessel had been recording, but not nearly as out-and-out pop as his next album, Bossa Nova. Here he leans on the jazz roots of Mancini’s compositions and swings some original solos on “The Big Blow Out” and “Loose Caboose.” Surprisingly, the soundtrack’s centerpiece, “Moon River,” is rendered pedestrian here, as if Kessel couldn’t find anything new to say with it. This album is likely to disappoint those seeking hard-bop, in line with the guitarist’s earlier works, but if you seek a variation on the original soundtrack, this is worth hearing. This album is also available on CD as a 3-fer with Bossa Nova and Contemporary Latin Rhythms. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Barney Kessel: Bossa Nova

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Swinging easy with a twangy guitar and a Latin beat

Those seeking Barney Kessel’s legendary jazz stylings should look elsewhere. As a guitarist in the ‘50s, Kessel was renowned for his cool, bop-inspired playing in small quartets on sessions with the Contemporary label. But in the early ‘60s he signed with Reprise and embarked on a series of pop records. This was hardly new territory for Kessel, as he’d been backing pop musicians for years, and was a first-call guitarist for pop titans like Phil Spector; but as a front-man, this was a break from the jazz sessions he’d previously led. This bossa nova inspired entry from 1962 finds Kessel mostly taking a back seat to sharp, lounge-inspired band orchestrations. His guitar playing here is twangy pop, with no jazz inflections or blue notes, and the repertoire of standards is given Brazilian beats. The horn charts are tight, and when Kessel does pick, he sounds great – but this isn’t a jazz album, or even a guitar album; it’s a pop instrumental album in league with contemporaneous works by Neal Hefti, Billy Strange, Lalo Schifrin, John Barry and others. This is a sizzling, swinging treat if you approach it on its merits, rather than as a lesser entry in Barney Kessel’s catalog of guitar recordings. This is also available on CD as a 3-fer with Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Contemporary Latin Rhythms. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Lonnie Mack: For Collector’s Only

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A ferocious rock ‘n’ soul ‘n’ blues guitar classic from 1963

This reissue of The Wham of That Memphis Man is the way that many listeners first met the savagely powerful guitar playing of Lonnie Mack. Originally released in 1963 on the Fraternity label, the album was re-sequenced and reissued with two extra tracks by Elektra in 1970. It’s since been reissue on CD, both in this stereo lineup, and in the original mono. The latter is more brutally powerful for its center-channel punch, but either configuration will astound you with Mack’s breathtaking, reverb-powered, tremelo-bar bent guitar playing. The album opens with Mack’s original “Wham!,” quickly gaining momentum until the song becomes an unstoppable locomotive. Mack picks wildly as the bass and drums stoke the beat and the rest of the band hangs on for dear life. Mack’s take on Dale Hawkins’ “Susie-Q” is just as deft, as he alternates between rhythm and lead, masterfully picking long twangy phrases that circle back to the root riff.

Mack’s first solo recording for Fraternity, an improvised cover of “Memphis,” is perhaps his most impressive, as he double-picks and ranges up and down the length of the fret board. No doubt Chuck Berry must have been impressed; Duane Allman, Stevie Ray Vaughan and others certainly were, as they taught themselves from these performances. Beyond Mack’s virtuosity as a guitarist, he was also a soulful vocalist who drew on the blues for Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What’s Wrong,” on gospel for the testimony of “Where There’s a Will There’s a Way,” and on both for the pained “Why.” For Collector’s Only adds two mono bonuses to the original Wham’s eleven tracks, the blues classic “Farther On Up the Road” and the flaming, original instrumental “Chicken Pickin’.”  Mono or stereo, original line-up or expanded, this is a true classic from 1963. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

The Kingsmen: Louie Louie – Live & Unreleased

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The Kingsmen lay it down live in late 1963

This stereo recording, excerpted from two live dates late in 1963, is of surprisingly good quality for its era. Kingsmen lead vocalist Jack Ely was not with the band at this point, so sax player Lynn Easton sings most of the leads, but no matter – this is club music for dancing, and the band lays down some mean beats. Much like the group’s iconic national anthem of garage rock, “Louie, Louie,” this is invitingly sloppy at turns, but the drums and bass will keep you moving, and the guitar and organ carve out passable, if not particularly inventive, jams. This isn’t a carefully rehearsed group recording a live album for posterity; it’s a rock ‘n’ roll band running through their repertoire for a club crowd. For maximum enjoyment, turn it up, have a drink or two, and dance. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Hot Club of Cowtown: What Makes Bob Holler

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Austin trio salutes the King of Western Swing

Hot Club of Cowtown’s affinity for Bob Wills has always been a fundamental element of their sound, but the ad hoc covers of their early years have taken fifteen years to ripen into a full-fledged tribute. The trio long ago settled into their winning combination of Texas swing and gypsy jazz, but here they lean heavily on the former, with Elena James sawing her fiddle more sweet than hot, and Whit Smith swinging his guitar more polite than fiery. Both James and Smith sing in the style of ‘40s band singers, but without the steel guitar, drums or horns that helped define the Texas Playboys. The results haven’t the volume of a big band, but the resulting space is deftly used to showcase the underpinnings of Western swing – rhythm, vocal shading, instrumental phrasing and repertoire. All three players take turns in the spotlight; the long, drawn notes of James’ solo on “Faded Love” are heartbreakingly beautiful, Smith’s tremolo picking on “Maiden’s Prayer” suggests a mandolin, and Jake Erwin’s slap bass solos show off both his melodic and percussive abilities. Recorded live in the studio, the collection plays as if it were the group’s nightly set list, tight to the point that the players can relax and really enjoy the feeling of swing.  [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Frankie Lymon: Rock ‘n’ Roll

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Teenager steps out for 1958 solo debut

After two successful years fronting the Teenagers, vocalist Frankie Lymon stepped into a surprisingly unsuccessful solo career with this fine 1958 studio album. Having lost his childhood soprano to adolescence, his 16-year-old voice still had plenty of punch, and continued to leap from the grooves. His out-of-breath delivery of “Waitin in School” has an adolescent everything-is-happening-at-once fervor that Ricky Nelson’s cool-cat style didn’t match. It doesn’t hurt to have an ace guitar player – Mickey Baker, perhaps – tearing thing up in the breaks. Producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore double the vocals on “Wake Up Little Suzie,” creating a more saucy mood than the Everly’s original, and though covers of the Rays’ “Silhouettes” and the Coasters’ “Searchin’” aren’t particularly inspiring, there’s still plenty here to impress. Lymon’s adolescence adds a note of sweet longing to Nat King Cole’s “Send for Me,” and the R&B “Next Time You See Me” and “Short Fat Fanny” give Lymon a chance to really wail. Most impressive are original approaches to “Jailhouse Rock” and “Diana” that pay each song its due without imitating the hits. Several of these tracks were released as singles, but none had the success of the early Teenagers’ sides; worse, with a heroin habit eating away his abilities, Lymon was dropped by Roulette in 1961. He’d record a few sides for other labels, but this album and a handful of non-LP singles for Roulette (that should have been included here as bonus tracks) represents the end of Lymon’s run as a bright thread in the rock ‘n’ roll tapestry. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]