Rare 45s + 78s: Rockers, Blues Wailers, Greaseball Classics, Hedgehog Hop, Moronic Obscurities, Instrumental Madness, X-Rated Parrot Training & More
Now here’s couple of stylin’ young thugs. Date and place unknown, but judging by the trousers I’d say early to mid-60’s (or as scientists like to call it, the pre-flare era). Can anyone identify the arsenal? Don’t you want to see what the rest of this roll of photos looks like?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5rrSAOyzb4%5D
Rosco Gordon from the film Rock Baby Rock It.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlKfziQlVdg%5D
Rosco Gordon serenades Butch the alcoholic chicken.
Rosco Gordon, Butch and Sam Phillips.
Still the easiest 45 to find on this label.
Return to Sun, the one was written by rocker Hayden Thompson.
Notice writing credit and mis-spelled first name.
When A Buck And A Half Bought Something.
Rosco Gordon Jr. was born in Memphis in 1934, the youngest of eight children, growing up on Florida Street. He taught himself piano by sitting next to his sister while she practiced her lessons and before the age of eighteen had won the Talent Show at Beale Street’s famed Palace Theater (the M.C. was Rufus Thomas) and was appearing on WDIA, America’s first all black radio station (where B.B. King got his start around the same time). Through WDIA’s owner James Mattis he was sent to see Sam C. Phillips who recorded him, leasing his sides to the Bihari Brother’ RPM label out of L.A., charting for the first time with Saddled The Cow (Milked The Horse) b/w Ouch! Pretty Baby which went to #9 R&B in September of ’51. Then Phillips sent two versions of the same master– Booted, one to RPM and a slightly different alternate take to Chess in Chicago. The Chess version hit #1 R&B in February of ’52 kicking off a three way tug of war which ended up with RPM securing Gordon’s contract (and the services of talent scout/band leader Ike Turner who had topped the charts for Chess with the Phillips produced master Rocket 88 under the guise of Jackie Breston & his Delta Cats, Chess would get Howlin’ Wolf in the same deal). Since RPM was no longer dealing with Phillips, Gordon cut sessions in Memphis at Tuff Green’s house in a makeshift studio, moonlighting for Phillips who then sold the masters to Mattis’ Duke label. Soon Duke was sold to Peacock’s owner, Don Robey, along with Gordon, Bobby Blue Bland (who was Rosco’s chauffeur, he made his debut singing on a Rosco Gordon b-side), and Johnny Ace. Confused? Don’t worry you will be.
Since Rosco had two top ten hits and had seen no royalties (and the Biharis had cut themselves in for a piece of his songwriting by putting their nome-de-disque Taub on all his discs), Rosco Gordon took the short money upfront, and hence would cut a disc for whom ever was willing to put his price (usually $3-400) in his pocket. Between the years of 1951-59 he cut eleven singles for RPM (including the #2 hit No More Doggin‘), eight for Duke, five for Sun (the biggest seller The Chicken appearing on both Sun and its subsidiary Flip), one for Chess (the aforementioned Booted), and four more for Vee Jay, including his biggest hit– Just A Little Bit, featuring Classie Ballou on guitar, which would go on to become an R&B standard.
It would be a daunting and quite pointless task to attempt to put these twenty-nine discs in any sort of chronological order. In fact, much of the best material was left in Sam Phillips’ vault which remained un-issued until the early 1980’s when Charley Records (a rumored money laundering operation for the Corsican mob) began releasing un-issued Sun recordings in bulk. The basic Rosco Gordon sound was based around his piano pounding (known as Roscoe’s rhythm), shuffling drums, guttural saxophone and often distorted guitars, over which Rosco usually delivered a wonderfully mush mouthed vocal. In addition to the above sides, some of his best were, and still are– RPM 322- Rosco’s Boogie b/w So Tired, Duke 129- Three Cent Love b/w You Figure It Out, the a-side sporting a beautiful solo from Pat Hare, the flip perhaps his most over the top vocal, RPM 358- New Orleans Wimmen b/w What You Got On Your Mind, Sun (and Flip) 227- Weeping Blues b/w Love For You Baby, Sun 257- Shoobie Oobie b/w Cheese and Crackers, Sun 305 Sally Joe b/w El Torro (the a-side an experiment in rockabilly, the flip an uncharacteristic Spanish guitar led instrumental that is rarely re-issued but I love), RPM 369- Dream On Baby b/w Trying RPM 384- Whiskey Made Me Drunk b/w Tomorrow May Be Too Late, Duke 173- Tummer Tee b/w I’ve Loved and I’ve Lost. Among the best of the un-issued sides you’ll find T-Model Boogie, Decorate The Counter, Let’s Get High, Bop With Me Baby, I’m Gonna Shake It, I Don’t Like It and Nineteen Years Old. He was cutting excellent sides into the late 60’s such as this 1964 duet with his wife Barbara which appeared on New York’s Old Town label– Gotta Keep Rollin’, and this 1968 remake of Just A Little Bit which appeared on gangster Nate McCalla’s Calla label.
Rosco Gordon had a colorful career. In one run in with hoodlum label owner Don Robey, Robey threatened to kick Gordon (he’d previously crushed Little Richard’s testicles in an argument over royalties). Gordon patted the revolver tucked into his belt and told Robey the foot he kicked him with was the foot he would put a bullet in. He escaped with his testes in tact. He toured the south on many package shows, relocated to Shreveport, La. in the late 50’s where he met his second wife Barbara (his first marriage at age 15 lasted only weeks), and kept churning out discs. He also toured the Caribbean where he was wildly popular, No More Doggin’ being one of the biggest R&B hits in Jamaican history and along with Fats Domino’s Be My Guest and Wilbert Harrison’s Kansas City, the blueprint for the coming ska sound. He also appeared in one of the greatest rock’n’roll movies of all time– Rock Baby Rock It (1957) along with rocker Johnny Carroll, in it Gordon serenades his pet chicken Butch (he later told me Butch, whom he toured with, was an alcoholic).
In the late 60’s he relocated to Queens, New York, where he founded his own Bab-Roc label issuing a handful of singles in the 70’s and then, in the style of TV’s George Jefferson, opened a dry cleaners. He kept performing till the end of his life and was in fine form as late as the millennium. He recorded an album for ska pioneer Clement “Sir Coxone” Dodd in the 90’s, it wasn’t particularly good, but I was thrilled to meet Dodd who was selling the discs from a cardboard box at the back of one of Gordon’s gigs in Brooklyn. In his final days Rosco Gordon attempted to patch things up with Sam Phillips who took great offense to Rosco’s disregard of exclusive contracts (even though Phillips had operated much the same way at the dawn of his career) and still harbored a grudge. In 2000 Rosco booked time at Sun Studio and asked Sam to produce a few sides. Rosco recorded an album at Sun but Phillips never showed. It was issued as Memphis, Tennessee later that year. In 2002 Rosco Gordon died of a heart attack in Rego Park, Queens, New York. Perhaps if life on earth continues for long enough, someone will compile a re-issue of his complete Duke sides.
Fang’s contribution this week is pretty self explanatory, a mugshot from the Minneapolis PD circa 1969. I give this little zit-faced greaseball snaps for keeping his pre-Beatles hair do, and getting his gal Loretta’s name tattooed on his arm in a decidedly amateurish font (in fact it looks kind of crooked). The mock turtle neck sleeveless makes me think he night be wearing one of Loretta’s dresses. What do you think he did to get arrested, and where do you think he is today?
The Liverbirds in front of the Star-Club
German pic sleeve.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL_D4gnpEx8%5D
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-essM3zzcrY%5D
It seems the last posting where I sighted a soft spot Freddie and the Dreamers has instigated a furor over what exactly is good, bad and mediocre music. In my opinion, great rock’n’roll usually has elements of all three, often in the same song. However the first (good) is never needed to make great rock’n’roll.
If you want good music you can listen to jazz or classical, rock’n’roll is supposed to be crude, stupid
and unpalatable. That’s why we, or at least I love it. Which brings us to today’s subject, the Liverbirds,
a Liverpool Beat combo who distinguished themselves by not only sitting when the piss, and having the ability to bleed for days on end without dying, but by being as competent as at least the Remo Four if not the Beatles themselves, whose John Lennon once opined that “they’d never make it”.
While not even rating a mention in the standard text on the subject– Alan Clayson’s Beat Merchants (Blandord, UK, 1995) and only a passing mention in the same author’s Hamburg- The Cradle Of British Rock (Sanctuary, UK, 1997), they did lay down enough wax to verify that they were as good or better than 90% of the other groups out there, could stomp out the Uber Beat with the best of them,
and are due for a full revival complete with documentary, biopic, and posthumous praise by current stars not fit to lick their cuban heels.
Formed in Liverpool in 1962, originally as the Debutones, the Liverbirds– guitarists Pamela Birch and Valerie Gell, bassist Mary McGlory and drummer Sylvia Saunders (they all sang), played the basic Mersey set list made up of mostly U.S. rock’n’roll of the time– Chuck Berry, girl group, early Motown, and made their mark in Hamburg, where they were more accepted than at home. They were regulars at the Star*Club, recording for the Star Club label, they scored one German top ten hit with a version of Diddley Daddy, cut at least one LP (I’ve heard mention of a second by never heard it), toured with the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and the Detours (who would become the Who), and eventually in 1968 packed it in, three of the four members marrying Germans and settling in the greater Hamburg area. Pam Birch passed away in 2009.
One thing that separated the Liverbirds from their Mersey compatriots, beside the obvious one, is that unlike the Liverpool competition, they had a distinct Bo Diddley influence, keep in mind Bo was probably the only early rocker who tunes were never covered by the Beatles (which I’d say accounted for their clanky sound), and most of the U.K. wouldn’t hear Bo’s tunes until the Rolling Stones, Pretty Things and Yardbirds began playing them. In fact they had more in common with the London R&B bands than with the Mersey Beat sound. I like them better than most of the Liverpool groups except maybe the Swinging Blue Jeans, and as much as London’s Downliner’s Sect for that matter. Some of their better recorded sides were their rendition of Sir Douglas Quinet’s (S)He’s About A Mover, Bo Diddley’s Mona (gives the Stones a run for their money), Road Runner, Bo Diddley’s A Lover, and Before You Accuse Me, the Coasters’ Down Home Girl, the Everly’s Love Hurts (which sounds like the Velvet Underground with Moe Tucker singing), Chuck Berry’s Too Much Monkey Business and Talkin’ About You, as well as some originals like Why Don’t You Hang Around Me, He’s Something Else, Hands Off and Oh No Not My Baby. All excellent sides, and if the covers aren’t as good as the American originals, they’re better than anything you’ll hear on the radio today. I won’t insult the Liverbirds by saying their pioneering ways were responsible for some of the truly lousy female rock groups that came later, I’ll just say they were a great band.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Caw5lrE0mmw%5D
Freddie & the Dreamers.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gqSLERc1GE%5D
Freddie & the Hitch- Hikers.
The top clip, from the 1965 NME awards shows just what a maniac live performer Freddie Garrity (who died in 2006) was. I never liked I’m Telling You Now, their only U.S. hit, although I do love Do The Freddie, their attempt at a dance craze, but they could liven up a TV appearence like nobody’s business.
Lester Bangs once called them– “a triumph of rock as cretinious swill”, as a lover of cretinious swill I concur.
The second clip was sent in by by reader Tom Lundin along with this article from the Denver Eye about Freddie & the Hitch-Hikers who cut the amazing Sinners b/w Mop Flop for Band Box in 1960. Great pix! Great record.
It’s been awhile since we’ve run a found photo from the Fang (and there’s still a few copies of the book
of the first fifty left, click here for details, and also ask about the catalog for her Help Me show).
Today’s photo shows two slicks in cool, Italian cut suits, circa January 1968. The white Christmas tree is a nice touch, as is the plastic covered chair that old uncle Willie is sitting on in the rear right of the frame.
The real question in my mind is who is that on the bass drum head? It looks a bit like the Isley Brothers, one the drum head that is? Also notice that there’s an adult size snare drum as well as the aforementioned kiddie kit in back. No drummer jokes please.
Fritz Lang on the left rocks out.
Fritz Lang with pipe and mood lighting.
Fritz Lang with snazzy hat, snazzy monocle, and natty scarf.
Liliom, Boyer cops a feel from Madeleine Ozeray (1934).
Fritz Lang (b. Dec. 5, 1890 in Vienna, d. Aug. 2 1976 in Hollywood) is having a good year. His masterpiece Metropolis (1927) has grown by nearly 25 minutes with recently added missing footage that had turned up in Argentina. The new version of Metropolis was shown earlier this year in New York at the Film Forum and again on TCM (which is showing Lang’s underrated Ministry of Fear tonight at 8 PM EST as part of a Graham Greene inspired double feature along with Carol Reed’s Fallen Idol, look for Abbott & Cosetello’s Hilary Brooke and all time great Dan Duryea in small but important roles). Having just returned from France, my mind keeps returning to a film I saw a year or so ago (and luckily saved on my cable company’s version of Tivo which they call DVR), one of the strangest and rarest flicks in the Fritz Lang canon, Liliom, a French remake of a 1930 Hollywood film that Lang made in between fleeing the Nazis back in Germany and his Hollywood debut Fury two years later. Liliom is a film that is somewhat whimsical and evidently personal, two words you wouldn’t normally associate with Lang. Lang’s sense of humor, missing from nearly all his other films (except maybe Scarlet Street) is quite prominent in Liliom, especially in the scenes where Boyer finds out heaven has as many rules and regulations as earth. Liliom was a film Lang felt strongly about, and towards the end of his life often called it his favorite. A bit of background.
Paris was the first stopping place for the mighty German film industry which fled the Nazis en masse in the early 30’s, but unlike fellow refugees like Robert Siodmak, Robert Wiene, Douglas Sirk, G.W. Pabst, Billy Wilder, Peter Lorre, and others who arrived in Paris penniless, Lang, who stayed in Germany long enough to field an offer from Goebbels to head the Nazi film biz, arrived in style, living in a luxury suite at the George V hotel off the Champ Elsees with a retinue of servants (but without his second wife and greatest collaborator Thea von Harbou who stayed behind). Such excess didn’t exactly make him popular amongst his compatriots (nor did the review of Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse that ran in the New York Times on April 29, 1933 which claimed “Lang is a Nazi”). It’s unlikely Lang cared what anyone thought of him at that point, he’s already directed what are still some of the greatest movies ever made, and had a rather high opinion of his talents. Liliom was a big budget, first class production, produced by Erich Pommer, with contributions from Franz Waxman (his first score, he’d later win two Oscars) and Robert Liebman (who’d written The Blue Angel and would die in a Nazi death camp).
Based on Ferenc Molnar’s 1909 play, Liliom was later remade as the musical Carousel, which I’ve never seen and could care less about, although Danny Fields, the final word on all things musical theater assures me is fabulous, Liliom is the story of a lowlife Paris carny barker, played by a young Charles Boyer, in his best roll, and his ill fated romance with the long suffering street urchin (and photographers assistant) as portrayed by Madeleine Ozeray. Boyer’s charachter gets himself killed in a botched robbery and spends the rest of the film going back and forth between heaven and earth where he tries to make life better for his widow and child. It’s a lot more light hearted than your usual Lang fare, while still visually stunning and totally unique. It’s well worth searching out. In an amazing cameo Antonin Artaud appears as “le remouleur” (the grinder), a different role than he’d played in 1923 when he appeared in the stage production of Liliom as a cop. Lang’s Liliom was a flop in France when released, having been denounced by the Catholic church, and was never released at all in the US, in fact it was nearly impossible to see for many years, now of course you can find the DVD, although the surviving print isn’t great, Lang fans are used to scratchy negatives. Lang would never make another film in France, something of a shame since the one he made there is so interesting. Soon after its failure it was off to Hollywood for Lang where he’d make modest budget film noir for several decades including such classics as Fury, The Big Heat, Scarlet Street, etc. before returning to Germany for his final three films (1960-1). He made no films the last decade of his life, although he appears opposite Jack Palance and Brigitte Bardot in Godard’s excellent and hateful Contempt (1963).
There are many excellent books on Fritz Lang, I’d recommend Lotte Eisner’s Fritz Lang (Secker & Warburg, 1976, and if you haven’t read her classic The Haunted Screen, get that too), Peter Bogdanovich’s Fritz Lang In America (Praeger, 1969) and Patrick McGilligan’s Fritz Lang: The Nature Of The Beast (St. Martin’s Press, 1997) although I’m not sure if I believe McGilligan’s case for Lang murdering his first wife.
Fritz Lang, we’ll not see another like him, nor will we see another film anything like Liliom. Too bad about that.
http://www.megavideo.com/v/WS5FGMZI459bbdd9531a08c7a3bb51f5ec8565202
Screamin’ Lord Sutch & his Savages- French TV courtesy of Bedazzled!
http://www.megavideo.com/v/J7C9BCI43b2c108eda0fac7adb47ec1fb1c02ad02
More Lord Sutch.
Not my caption.
