Crash-Course, No. 30: Bill Withers, The Storyteller from Slab Fork, WV

A home of Bill Withers

Bill Withers struggled to get inside the recording industry and kept struggling once he got inside. He came from literally nowhere, growing up in a small town called Beckley, Western Virginia, that lived and too often died according to what happened in the mines. He had a storyteller’s sense to claim Slab Fork, West Virginia as his hometown; he was born there, but the more poetic name suggested itself for his bio. He would find his way to Los Angeles by way of the U.S. Navy and a succession of manufacturing jobs in the defense industry, but Withers spent his time off writing songs and plotting his escape.

He never trusted the industry, not even before he got into it, but reports that he held on to his day job to see what happened with 1971’s Just As I Am matches what he calls his hometown. As he admits in a 2014 interview with WNYC’s Anna Sale, he had been laid off while all that was going on and got a call to return to work and a call from Johnny Carson’s people the same day. No matter what he said at the time, he went straight to The Tonight Show and never looked back. That album featured “Grandma’s Hands” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” a song inspired by the Jack Lemmon/Lee Remick movie, Days of Wine and Roses. The latter won a Grammy and gave Withers a chance to record a follow up the next year with Still Bill, which brought more fame and another Grammy for “Lean on Me.” With two massively successful (and ultimately iconic) singles in his pocket, Withers looked like a man with a formula - enough, even, to punch his ticket to perform at the famous Rumble in the Jungle, where Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman in Zaire. And yet his record companies kept meddling.

He put out several more albums as a solo artist through the rest of the 1970s, but basically checked out after 1978’s ‘Bout Love. Withers had reached his limit with the A&R people - “antagonistic and redundant” he called them during his acceptance speech for the lifetime achievement award he received in 2015 (great speech, btw). They’d tell him no one releases a song without a few bars of intro (he’d comeback with “’Ain’t No Sunshine’ didn’t have one) or that he should add some instrument or another to punch it up (to someone who got famous sitting on a stool playing a guitar), so Withers busied himself with a handful of collaborations and not much else. That lasted until 1985’s Watching You Watching Me, which I have yet to listen to…then again, I have a pathological distrust production from the 80s, and I’ve got a thousand other stops to make on this tour...

Crash-Course No. 29: Jungle Brothers Blazed a Trail

The new album. 2020, y'all!

[Ed. - Another “rewrite,” which is in quotes this time because, the About the Sampler section aside, it’s going up here the same way it did in the original (messy) mega-post. Still leaning toward keeping the “Who They’re For, A Little More,” and “About the Sampler” format…separating the sources too.]

Who They’re For: Hip hop fans with a fondness for originators - e.g., one of the earlier attempts to expand the genre’s musical influences by fusing jazz, hip-hop and house music (hip-house!) - and lovers of both consciousness and fun. They came out about a decade into hip hop’s existence and still opened up one of its most fruitful sub-genres.

A Little More
“So where you had Jungle Brothers brought into the nation by Red Alert, you had Jungle Brothers bringing in Tribe and De La and we rolled out like that. Before that, it was BDP, Ultramagnetic MCs, Nice & Smooth and Mark the 45 King with Markey Fresh and the Violators. Red was mentoring all of us.”

This one starts with the thought experiment: what would it be like to grow up in New York with Kool DJ Red Alert, one of the biggest names in the beating heart of hip hop, as your uncle? The leg up didn’t hurt the Jungle Brothers, but Red Alert only gave them a platform (by playing “Braggin’ & Boastin’” on his Kiss 98.7 radio show), which left Mike G (aka, Michael Small; also the nephew), Afrika Baby Bam (aka, Nathaniel Hall), and DJ Sammy B (Sammy Burwell) with the work of changing what hip hop artists could talk about ahead of them. With musical and performance influences like Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Earth Wind & Fire as their North Star, Jungle Brothers built the Native Tongue crew one band and one artist at a time, playing together and touring together, and generally keeping an exhausting pace. They also added musical elements to hip hop beyond the funk, disco and dance breaks and pushed forward Afro-centric themes; the latter wasn’t so unusual - see, Boogie Down Productions - but Jungle Brothers, and Native Tongue as a whole, made it all sound more fun - and funny. Their 1988 release, Straight Out of the Jungle, put them on the map and they expanded it a year later with Done by the Forces of Nature. Their peers passed them - Tribe Called Quest, in particular - and they arguably arrived in the wrong moment, i.e., a couple years before hip hop’s center of gravity shifted to the West Coast, then got swallowed up by the East Coast/West Coast mess. They’re easy to research in that you don’t have to turn over too many stones to find interviews, but they have neither the history nor the drama that gives the “holy shit” moments that make these things easy to write. If I had to name the one thing that kept coming up in most of the sources I read, it’s the recording of “I’ll House You,” and why not? By most accounts, everyone involved but the Jungle Brothers gave that track the side-eye and the producer suggested recording it as a lark, something to fill some time at the end of the album. That song still seems to get a lot of play and I’ll always cherish it for the way Afrika Baby Bam describes the recording process:

Crash-Course, No. 28: Billy Paul, Keep Sight of the Forest and the Trees

Visualizing "towering."

Despite recording one of the most popular soul numbers you’ve heard (from wherever you’ve heard it) - “Me and Mrs. Jones” - Billy Paul was surprisingly hard to research. He's pretty much pre-internet, which kinda sucks, because he’s got a rich story.

Paul started recording long before his success - as far back as 1952 (with two songs I can’t find) - and he crossed paths with some straight-up legends, becoming very close to one of them. He was inducted into the U.S. Army and served in Germany with Elvis Presley starting in 1957, but Paul couldn’t sell The King on a touring band he put together; Elvis focused on driving jeeps and keeping his nose clean and away from show business (all of it carefully managed and encouraged by Colonel Tom Parker). Much later in his career, Paul and his future wife/manager, Blanche Williams, grew close to Marvin Gaye, but, to the regret of The Roots’ Questlove, he never matched his friend’s reputation or influence. It was never for lack of trying or originality.

Even before they found Harold Melvin, even before they launched PIR, Gamble and Huff found Paul singing in a Philadelphia venue called The Sahara Club. Liking what they heard, they signed him to their then-label Gamble Records and put out his full debut album, 1968’s Feelin’ Good at the Cadillac Club. That album sounded nothing like his later material (and it didn’t work for me), and Paul explained the shift in an unexpected way:

“I was singing totally Jazz then, but when I heard the Beatles and heard the gospel influence and everything I just said: 'I can make jazz with R&B.' That transition came when The Beatles came out to America.”

While he called Billy Holliday his biggest influence - because he (generally) sang higher up the scale - Paul pulled inspiration from all over:

Crash-Course, No. 27: Viva Viva Voce

Also the name of a German a capella group.

Viva Voce was a two-member outfit built around husband and wife, Kevin and Anita Robinson (nee Anita Elliott), so it’s not too surprising the band ended when they divorced. They started out in their native Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 1998, before relocating (first) to Nashville, Tennessee, then Portland, Oregon - apparently, with some prodding by Menomena’s Danny Seim - where they spent most of their careers. They played most of that time as a two-piece, even live and, if you spend any time listening to them, they put out an impressive amount of volume, variety and texture with just two people. A Guitar World interview with Anita that came out around the same time as their final album (lots of great gear/guitar talk in that one, btw), The Future Will Destroy You, neatly summed up how that worked in practice:

“With Kevin manning the drums while also playing acoustic guitar (no kidding!) and singing, and Anita playing lead guitar while singing ethereal lead vocals, their live sound is surprisingly fat and ballsy for just two players.”

Viva Voce lasted over a decade as a going concern - not bad for an indie outfit - and, per Wikipedia, toured with some of their bigger peers, like Jimmy Eats World and The Shins. That gave them enough time to drop a pretty healthy discography, spanning from 1998’s Hooray for Now to The Future; their breakthrough album, to the extent they had one, was 2004’s The Heat Can Melt Your Brain, which got them big enough to tour in Europe (if I combine sources here - Wikipedia and a 2014 Willamette Week piece on Kevin’s (ungentle) life after the split (seriously, oof), that could be when they got on board with a UK indie label called Full Time Hobby). Another thing worth noting: they expanded to a four-piece, at least for touring purposes, during/after 2009’s release of Rose City (5th album; cute song, btw), by adding Evan Railton (instrument unknown) and Corinna Repp (guitar, I’m guessing).

That Willamette Week piece flags the tour for The Future as the beginning of a very sharp end: Kevin colorfully described the experience as “going from one beheading to the next.” It’s funny, if only in that highly-specific context, to read a 2005 appreciation of The Heat (etc.)/evil prophecy from the UK's Independent regarding how many bands built on two people implode in white-hot recriminations - and woe betide the people dumb enough to attempt it while married (though it’s nice when the same article credits Sonny and Cher for being “troupers” for reaching “an amicable rapprochement after their split). Good on calling the future…I guess?

One Hit No More, No. 50: No One Home at the Edison Lighthouse

Totally wizard, man.

The Hit
I’m pretty confident I’d heard “Love Grows (“Where My Rosemary Goes)” one-to-several times or another on the various local oldies radio channels I listened to down the years, but I couldn’t have connected them to an act called Edison Lighthouse, not even if that was the only way to rescue my kids from a hostage situation. As it happens there’s a pretty good reason for that, something I’ll get into below.

“Love Grows” is a pretty, catchy song from straight outta the late-stage bubblegum pop era and it takes liberal advantage of the ear-worm arsenal: e.g., the white-funky guitar riff, the soft, bright horns that swell into simple verses of nonsense (“she ain’t got no money/her clothes are kinda funny/her hair is kinda wild and free”) that opens up into a sticky chorus, and a basic toe-tapping rhythm that just about anybody can’t lose. It’s like somebody was tasked with writing a hit, so they listened to what was working at the time and got to work.

That’s not too far off, really, even if it jumps ahead of the main story by about an album and a tour.

The Rest of the Story
As much as I regret it happening on the 50th post in this series (who shits on a milestone?), I will not regret phoning in this one. On the plus side, I get to kill two birds with one stone courtesy of that editorial decision, thus saving me from having to listen to The First Class’ “Beach Baby” ever again. I mean, what sane man wouldn’t take that trade?

Unlike most of the bands discussed below, Edison Lighthouse was an actual band - even if the last one for the main person of interest to the larger story.

Tony Burrows started his career in pop music with The Kestrels, a band he formed between the English version of high school and a stint in the Army. Two of his bandmates - Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway - went on to become London’s answer to New York’s Brill Building songwriting machine, writing a string of hits for a generation of English artists, plus a couple for Eurovision contests and, with your friends at the Coca-Cola corporation, one of the most famous ad pitches in history. They’d also write several more hits with/for Burrows…but I’m getting ahead on him again.

Crash-Course, No. 26: King Princess, the Stuff of Legends

Fuck it, I'll call her an icon.

Mikaela Mullaney Straus, aka, King Princess, has an interesting enough bio for someone so young - her great-great grandfather, Isidor Straus, was a member of Congress (and perhaps the only one) who slipped into the icy waters with The R.M.S. Titanic, and she descends from the co-owners of (fucking) Macy’s (though she’s clear on one thing: “I didn’t inherit any of this money”). Even her recent family history ties her to someone interesting - e.g., Oliver Straus, Jr., a recording engineer who ran Williamsburg’s Mission Sound recording studio, where she learned a true gear-head’s worth of knowledge, wisdom and technical prowess.

And yet she’s made more life on her own in her short time on Earth than most of us ever will. The challenge comes with wrapping your head around the avalanche of personal details and complexities that surround the one studio album she’s put out…with a deluxe version.

King Princess arrived with a rush of success: her debut single, “1950,” an ode “to The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (1952 novel), to the LGBT community and queer love,” went platinum both on its own strengths and with a push from Harry Styles…who, by the way, she was scheduled to tour Europe with before COVID took a giant shit on everyone’s life and plans (fucking COVID…). She’s got a number of connections to the stars - e.g., Mark Ronson as the flagship artist to his Zelig Recordings (that was in 2017) and Fiona Apple, who calls Straus “my son” and who featured when Straus covered her song “I Know” - all of which sounds like going stratospheric out of the gates…but King Princess has a strong sense of playing on the outside looking in. Which is a shame, because, holy shit…she is good. But she also sounds like…for lack of a better phrase, a full-time fucking handful.

“You know what’s not a fun person to be around at age 7, 8, 9?” she asks. “Someone who knows they’re going to be famous. That kid is challenging. I was a lot. I was brutal.”

That comes out of a New York Times profile from early 2020, before the world closed shop (and which I’m afraid of opening again for fear of burning my free reads), and I feel like the best way for a middle-aged straight man explain King Princess is to let Straus explain herself by way of some telling quotes - if with some filler by other writers. Before that, though, I wanted to round out her profile and career highlights so far.

Crash-Course, No. 25: The Happy Fits, It Came From Spotify...

Who could say no to those faces?

[Ed. - This was a good format, so I’m keeping it for this post…and holding it as a thought.]

Who They’re For
Picking through the influences they name - e.g., The Killers, The Strokes, Young the Giant and Two Door Cinema (who…got me) - gives a fair impression. So, lots of angular sounds, generally up-tempo stuff, with a 2000s throw-back vibe. Maybe the easiest way to explain is to let their lead vocalist*/mainsongwriter/cellist, Calvin Langman talk about inspirations:

“One thing all these bands do in common is that they write awesome melodies that make you want to scream and dance your butt off.”

That’s right, he’s a cellist…classically-trained too.

A Little More
“It’s rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what we want to be called. That’s what I feel when I play bar chords on a cello. Nod your head, tap your feet.”

Langman met his original co-collaborator, Ross Monteith in high school and through a combination of Latin class and facebook. After talking about the guitar covers Monteith posted and finding they liked the same sounds - in someone else’s words “A shared affinity for crisp melodies and crunching guitar” - Langman passed on the bones of a couple songs he wrote to Monteith (think it was “Dirty Imbecile”) and they decided to start playing together. A four-song EP they titled Awfully Apeelin’ came out of that and they posted it to Spotify for family and friends and went off to college - separate ones, from the sound of it. It was a lark, basically…

…until Spotify got their hands on it and dropped it onto one suitable Discover Weekly playlist after another (mine included), pushing and pushing and pushing until “While You Fade Away” became a brand-new baby/the No. 5 of the 50th most-viral songs posted to the service (for 2018). Monteith dropped out of college one semester later, Langman after two - and The Happy Fits were born. The band’s drummer, Luke Davis, has perhaps the best origin story. The other two brought him in as a session drummer to complete their debut album, Concentrate (2018): “I didn’t even think anything of it. I was like, ‘70 bucks man, that sounds awesome!’ As a college kid, that’s like the gold mine.”

Crash-Course, No. 24: The Lemon Twigs, Cool, Connected Theater Kids

In their natural state....

“Brian: Creatively, it's been pretty healthy since we've started enjoying each other's music --

Michael: We just get out of each other's faces.

Brian: But there's like a looming question of the fact that we split the duties and we fill up an album with half my songs and half of Michael's songs, basically.

Michael: What's the looming question? I'm still waiting on the looming question. Nothing's looming.

Brian: It's looming so much that I'll never get to it.”

That exchange is about four years old, but it sums up the functioning relationship between brothers behind The Lemon Twigs, Michael and Brian D’Addario. People with patience for sibling squabbling can enjoy through an extended version of it in a two-part interview with an outlet called Face Culture from a year earlier (pt. 1 and pt. 2). They’re both very young in that one - Brian around 18, and Michael just 16 - and it takes a little while to warm up…but once it does, holy shit, is it entertaining (it’s comedy gold for me). They did interviews separately after that, at least for a while. As Michael explained in a 2018 interview with The Independent, “Better to contradict than to be cut off.”

Spotify hepped me to The Lemon Twigs about [two and a half years] go with “Tailor Made,” which dropped me in the early-middle portion of their output. Without knowing anything about them, I thought they’d read my likes and fed me either an old 70s song, or some throwback act pushing their mid-20s or so. Turns out the actual story is much odder.

The D’Addarios grew up in a musical family from Hicksville, Long Island - one wired enough into that world where they could ask Todd Rundgren to sing a part on their second album. Both brothers have been performing since childhood, doing everything from Youtube videos to multiple shows on Broadway - e.g., from 2018 article in an outlet called Another Man Mag (this is Michael), “Assassins, The King and I, South Pacific and Oklahoma as childhood favourites, in addition to early roles in Oliver and “fucking Les Mis and stuff like that” - to movies involving Ethan Hawke and Michelle Pfeiffer. They started writing their own material by age 7 (per Brian, “basically a Monkees song” called “Girl”). They put out Do Hollywood in 2016, an either conscious or unconscious homage to The Beatles or The Beach Boys, or even Procol Harum (that Face Culture interview is messy), but a mid-60s Beatles influence comes through very cleanly on a track like “Those Days Is Comin’ Soon” (or “Haroomata”), among others. Their debut EP, Brothers of Destruction, makes a case for my, frankly, shaky understanding of The Beach Boys - e.g., “Why Didn’t You Say That?”

One Hit No More, No. 49: The Jaggerz...and That's the "R-A-P-P-E-R"

A jagger bush.

The Hit
I don’t recall ever hearing “The Rapper” before this week, which doesn’t give me a lot to work with on the “memories” side. On the one hand, it’s before my time (1970), but, on the other, I came out near enough to where I grew up to where that surprises me a little.

Having heard it, I can confirm it’s a catchy little bugger. No matter how many times I went through the two albums by The Jaggerz Spotify gives me access to, I always found myself humming that one (and only that one) after moving on. As noted by its main songwriter, Donny Iris, it opens on a simple strumming guitar riff vaguely reminiscent of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Tight, bright harmonized vocals break over that singing about a guy chatting up a girl - they called that “rapping” back then, or at least in Pittsburgh, PA, hence, “The Rapper” - before the song shifts to a booming funk chorus with fuzz bass buzzing under it and a cowbell clanging through it. Amending the above, it’s a really fucking catchy tune. As for the inspiration, it’s as straightforward as it sounds, as Jimmie Ross recalled in an interview the always awesome Classic Bands:

“Actually, that was a Black saying years ago. What it meant was a guy rapping on a girl in a nightclub. We would see that all the time, so Donny wrote a song about it.”

Iris (born Dominic Ierace) worked up the lyrics, put together the guitar part and brought it to another member of The Jaggerz, Benny “Euge” Faiella. After they fleshed out the song together (the band worked collaboratively in generally), they couldn’t exactly explain the why or what of it. As Faiella explained to the Times Online (from western Pennsylvania?):

“At the time, we were a very soulful band and we were influenced by R&B and like the Temptations and the Impressions and all the black music we played a lot. That song was nowhere like where we were. It sounded entirely different, you know?”

Crash-Course, No. 23: Lucky Daye's Old, Striving Soul

Yeah, sometimes I show the artist...

“I consider myself an old soul, a forever soul, an infinite soul, a soul that ain’t ever gonna die. I feed my soul to love, man. It can’t die.”

If you weigh what Lucky Daye has accomplished against what he's gone through, chalking it up to something bigger makes as much sense as anything.

Born in New Orleans 35 years ago as David Debrandon Brown, he was raised in a religious setting that flirted with sociopathy. Described as a “cult” across multiple outlets - I’d call Fader’s 2019 article the most eloquent on details, Vice’s interview the most thorough - his parents and some of his extended family joined before he was born and followed its strict rules of discipline (e.g., beatings for not eating everything off your plate; “"I just know there was a room that I hated that they put us in.”) and as complete a separation from “secular” society as one can manage in 21st century America. That Daye asked Vice not to identify the now-defunct church adds another layer, as did credible, "no-contest" reports of sexual abuse.

Both his parents had left the "church" by the time Daye was eight, but the experience still separated him from the "normal" around him. He navigated all that as well as he could, and the quality of voice helped; he was charming girls with it for pocket money by 9th grade. His father left when he was young, leaving his mother to raise his siblings and him - something that became harder still after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. Something to note: he tried out for American Idol that same year, singing as David Brown. He wowed all four judges (even that prick Gene Simmons) and went to Hollywood.

Daye’s family moved after Katrina but the search for that religious/spiritual something kept his mother on the same path, if a healthier version of it(?). Feeling increasingly at odds with that upbringing, Daye checked out that life - and with finality and feeling:

Crash-Course, No. 22: Black Pumas, a Busker Meets a Producer

Guessing Burton met a brighter fate than this guy...

[Ed - I looked into the Austin-based, 2020-darlings Black Pumas at the beginning of the year - e.g., before the shit hit the fan. Something in Spotify’s algorithm decided I loved them - strong word, but not far wrong; good band, great sound - which made them one of my accidental heavy repeats of 2020. But, because I buried them in one of those mash-up posts, I worked-up a stand-alone post for the Crash Course series.]

When a new band makes it “Grammy-nom-bid” out of the blue, a lot of outlets come a-callin’ to help the world play catch-up. When there’s not a lot of story to tell - Black Pumas came together only in 2017 - you wind up telling the same story over and over, whether to Rolling Stone, or to Q on CBC. It’s a good story, and that’s below, but the looser, name-dropping fiesta posted earlier this year by Interview Magazine reveals them as people and according to their inspirations better than anything else I read or watched. Now, the origin story.

Adrian Quesada was already established in Austin, Texas, and with a strong track record as a guitarist and producer behind him - e.g., 15 years of touring, several Grammy nominations, including a win with Grupo Fantasma (a taste), an invite to play Prince’s Glam Slam club, etc. After burning out on touring, he’d settled down into Austin, but still had the itch bad enough to work up the beginnings of some songs. That had him casting around for a new collaboration.

Eric Burton, meanwhile, grew up in the San Fernando Valley as a theater kid, but in a religious setting (when people use the phrase “secular music”…). Growing up in choir competitions (this part of the Interview…interview is charming) developed his voice and he knocked around acting a little (e.g., a bit role in the Keira Knightly/Mark Ruffalo vehicle, Begin Again) and flirted with college in his youth. He eventually gravitated to busking, starting on the Santa Monica Pier (where he did quite well; a couple hundred a night) before a road-trip with friends to Austin landed him at his final destination. Once he nailed down a popular Austin street corner, he started gathering notice. Burton, as it turns out was working up some material of his own (a strong cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” among them).

One Hit No More, No. 48: Free and the Time-Bomb Called "All Right Now"

Yep, that's presence.

The Hit
After passing through doo-wop (e.g., Don & Juan), Motown (e.g., The Exciters), surf rock (e.g., The Surfaris or The Chantays), garage rock (e.g., The Standells or ? and the Mysterians), a whiff of folk-rock (e.g., Buffalo Springfield), plus this weird phase of record labels swooping into then-thriving Ohio industrial towns for the next bubblegum pop star (e.g., The Lemon Pipers or Crazy Elephant), this project arrives at its first clear example of what I’d call 70s roots rock. All right, maybe Mountain/”Mississippi Queen” slips under the same bill, but still, it's fun ticking through music history.

Free’s “All Right Now” is a no-frills, all-balls rocker, not a word in mix about revolution or warm feelings from anywhere but the loins. It’s basically a vignette - a guy sees a girl, he chats her up, gets her to “his place,” and the negotiations begin - set to music: a steady rhythm pumping under it and fuzzy guitar licks purring around the narrator’s lyrics. After laying all that out there, the song gets coy about how things ended up…but “all right now” hints at satisfaction with the chase, if nothing else…

…all that’s noted without endorsing one-night stands, or pressuring a woman into one - and the “she” in the song hardly sounds entirely up to calling his bullshit - but the young men of this generation received clear and loud signals that “chasing” women was very much what they were supposed to do (e.g., Elvis Presley’s “Power of My Love”).

To close this section with a funny footnote, Free’s Paul Rodgers claims that a woman named Marsha Hunt inspired the song, and doing nothing more than literally “standing there, in the street.” Hunt was performing in a London production of Hair at the time. And dating Mick Jagger…Rodgers was struck “by her presence.”

Crash-Course, No. 21: Chaka Khan ft. Rufus...or at least that's what happened...

For anyone interested in the “how I got here,” my look at The American Breed pointed me toward Rufus – or Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan. Because that’s how things worked out for the most part.

“The thing back then was to have a white band with a black chick out front – that was major money, made the club owners interested. Another racist phase that passed through Chicago.”
- Chaka Khan, providing quality framing

 Rufus formed in Chicago, circa 1970, with several members of The American Breed - e.g., Charles “Chuck” Colbert (bass), Lee Graziano (drums), brought in Kevin Murphy (keys), Paulette McWilliams (vocals) - pulling in members of Chicago bar-band, Circus, e.g., James Stella and Vern Pilder. Now, forget all those names because, apart from Murphy, no other member stuck with Rufus from start-to-finish. Only Chaka Khan came close; then again, her (probably wise and necessary) decision to go solo probably broke the band.

After losing members here and gaining them there, plus a couple name changes (they started as “Smoke”), the band attempted to launch of “Ask Rufus” a nod to an advice column in a trade mag of the same name, Mechanics Illustrated. They became Rufus by 1971, and even recorded a lost debut for Epic Records, but didn’t truly hit their stride until McWilliams made room for her friend, Yvette Marie Stevens, who became Chaka Khan. Stevens picked up Chaka through a naming ceremony at the Affro-Arts theater in Chicago (her mother was active there), and picked up the surname Khan when she married Hassan Khan, while still 17, so she could sign the recording contract her mother refused to sign for her. (Chaka Khan had a chaotic childhood in a stable setting, including sometime with the Black Panthers).

While the charismatic shadow cast by Chaka Khan grew quickly - their label pushed them as Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan as early as their second album - they made their name on the 1972-1975 line-up of Khan on vocals, Al Ciner on guitar, Murphy and Ron Stockett on keyboards, Dennis Belfield on bass and Andre Fischer on drums. They didn’t have to shop demos for long before ABC Dunhill offered them a contract; Ike Turner caught wind of them all the way out in Los Angeles, and invited them out to record at his studio (where he could try to talk Khan into becoming an “Ikette”). Their 1973 eponymous debut didn’t go anywhere, but the power and potential of Chaka Khan’s vocals inspired Stevie Wonder to write songs for her (“Tell Me Something Good” was the first and biggest), and their follow-up album, 1974’s Rags to Rufus, blew all the way up to platinum (“You Got the Love” was the other big single). Rufusized followed in 1974 and, on the back of “Once You Get Started,” “I’m a Woman (I'm a Backbone)” and others, that went platinum too.

Crash-Course, No. 20: I'm Not On Drugs, You're on Drugs!

Third image, first best.

Where’d I hear about On Drugs? No goddam idea, which is exactly the problem with moving fast. Then again, they committed to treading lightly onto the internet - and by choice - and it hardly helps their name gets buried under a bigger act like War on Drugs. On the plus side, I might finally know how Kurt Vile had that huge head start I missed…

As hinted at above, finding much of anything beyond bare-bones promotion is damn near impossible with On Drugs. You have to double-check every headline just to find the band members - Elias Avila, Derek Housh, Cameron Gates, and Steve Gartman, which I found on something like the third link I found (a San Diego Reader plug), and without any mention of who does what - so they really do live the brand. On the other hand, a whiff of novelty isn’t the worst selling point:

“From their experimental punk drone to their intentional lack of an internet presence, they're the band you may not have known existed until you saw them…”

Because they titled an album titled Uckhole Futah, I assumed On Drugs came out of Utah, but, nope, they started in Portland, Oregon. I have a loose sense they relocated to San Diego, California upon signing with Postmark Records - none of the entries on that site last real long - but, based on the venues they played on a 2019 tour, where they come from matters less than where they can play. (Something I mean in the best possible way, because that’s where I’ve found most of the bands - i.e., people who play off the beaten path, but not too far.)

For what it’s worth, I don’t think the “experimental punk drone” holds up because they have a decent range - included in the sampler - between something that fits that bill to circle-into-a-circle perfection like “Squish,” to a pure old-school punk number like “Tony Hawk,” to the dreamy lo-fi number “Scaredy Cat” (which gave me Modest Mouse with less distortion and gave my wife, “I don’t know, something 80s, but also boring”), to garage-rock tear/cover like “Tequila.” Even if those aren't the hardest genres, there’s some decent musicianship going on, basically, a band with the chops to build a live-set around a couple spins around the genre-wheel, only without using the internet for promotion.

Crash-Course, No. 19: The King, the Colonel & the Comeback

Yes, but also no.

[Ed. - This is the first of several rewrites I’ll be posting in order to salvage this project. It originally went up as a post tied to a playlist, only I shoved Elvis Presley together with Julie London (sure), and The Kinks (why not?), so it was too much and too little at the same time; a unique feat, even for me. At any rate, I’m going back to posting on just one artist/band at a time and carrying forward the format that always worked so well for this site’s One Hit No More Project…gods only know why this didn’t come to me sooner. And this is the one time I’ll mention it. Now…The King.]

I can’t fucking believe I thought I’d just casually climb the mountain of iconography around The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In practical terms, most people of a certain age (and maybe beyond) have absorbed the key highlights through cultural osmosis – e.g., “the pelvis,” “Hound Dog” (or “Heartbreak Hotel” (quietly brilliant lyrics, btw), “Love Me Tender,” and “Jailhouse Rock,” which still fucking rips), the movies, the cultural appropriation, the Vegas residencies, the thing with Dick Nixon, Fat Elvis….where he (reportedly) died, the fact that - wait, hear me out - Elvis did not die, etc. So, rather than climb that mountain, I wanted to focus on a some things I’ve learned outside that top-line stuff, and also how Elvis reclaimed his career…if only until his pill addiction carried away both it and him.

Ed Ward’s The History of Rock & Roll, 1920-1965 (yes, no typo) has some…just fantastic, touching snippets on Elvis as he tried to break in to the business. In Ward’s telling, Elvis had a reputation for flamboyant style – i.e., he wanted to stand out – but he also talks about how, after his first pay-to-play recording, he checked back every day to see if anything happened. Sam Phillips (who got hella lucky as an amateur producer; also, you’ve probably had some personal experience with his later investments) took some time to like what he heard, there were some snafus between Perkins and his secretary, etc. Other charming details included Elvis’ devotion to his mom, and how shyly he approached…the young Priscilla Beaulieu, later Priscilla Presley, and their subsequent several years of “living in sin” while Beaulieu was still a teenager. They met during Elvis’ stretch in Germany serving in the U.S. Army - she was the daughter of an Air Force colonel (who disapproved of the relationship) - and that wasn’t the only meaningful encounter from those years: a sergeant Elvis served with introduced him to amphetamines, which Elvis liked enough to become “practically evangelical about their benefits.” Still, he focused on being a regular soldier during his time in the Army, which provides a good way to introduce another key player in the story: Colonel Tom Parker.

One Hit No More, No. 47: The Five Stairsteps, A Happy Place, and Several Surprises

It's fine. But their dad was a cop. I'm still...

The Hit
The Five Stairsteps, “O-o-h Child” recalls such a vivid memory for me that it’s pretty much all I think of when I hear the song. A friend of mine went to Evergreen State College and, on one of the many visits, we went on a road-trip with a bunch of friends - think this was to the Oregon Coast, actually. Because we piled God knows how many people into too few cars, I had no seat, so I lounged across the back. That was first time I’d heard “O-o-h Child,” and when it came on, my head was resting in a woman’s lap, someone I’d just met. She was singing along, like everyone else, but watching her sing is the only thing I remember.

There’s no story after that; she never became a friend or a girlfriend (though I did meet her once later and that weekend came up, and there was a definite, "oh, shit, why didn't we?!" conversation); it was just that moment, watching a young woman sing a beautiful, heartwarming, hopeful song flush with the optimism of youth. She sang it like she believed it, and that felt very true in the moment…

…what was I talking about again? In all seriousness, I love this one. Great instrumentation, great open spaces for the vocals, a killer chorus, and an outro that sends you to the moon. And yet there's more...

The Rest of the Story
I almost covered The Five Stairsteps in a train-wreck I cobbled together about Super K Productions/Buddah Records, but I held back when I spotted them on the list of one-hit wonders I’m mining for all this. That’s probably for the best because The Five Stairsteps make for an odd fit in the Buddah Records extended universe (e.g., a lot of white garage bands from Ohio).

The Five Stairsteps came out of Chicago as a family act under the guidance of their parents, Betty and Clarence Burke Sr. Clarence Sr. was a detective with the Chicago P.D., but he also played a couple instruments (he backed The Five Stairsteps on guitar and bass, apart from managing them) and he knew some helpful people - notably, Fred Cash of The Impressions (theseguys). Their kids formed the band - in age order, Clarence Jr., Alohe, Dennis, James, Kenneth “Keni,” and, much later, Hubie - with Clarence Sr. and Clarence Jr. writing their material with help from a guy named Gregory Fowler. The name for the act came to Betty Burke when she saw her kids standing lined up by age; they looked like five stairsteps, you see…

One Hit No More, No. 46: Bobby Bloom, Who Will Always Have Montego Bay

The Hit
In keeping with a new pattern, who the Hell is Bobby Bloom? And didn’t The Beach Boys do “Montego Bay” with Jon Stamos slapping away at the congas?

Of course not, that was two decades after Bloom rose to very brief fame when this tune shot up to No. 8 on the U.S. charts (it made it all the way to No. 3 in the UK). "Montego Bay" was a fun, bubbly number that dances over a loping beat and boasts one of a great, super-sticky hook in the chorus. Bloom has a unique voice - a mix of husky and warm that clicks perfectly with the lazy and carefree spirit of the song - but I can’t sell Bloom’s hit any better than a blog I found called 7 Inches of 70s Pop:

“And ‘Montego Bay’s” mix of pop and calypso along with the pleasurable images of laying on the beach during the day, drinking silver rum and driving your MG to an all night party did more for Jamaican tourism than anything their consulate had dreamed up.”

That post provides a decent glimpse into Bloom’s works and collaborations, even if it sells him a bit short by calling him “a struggling songwriter” (we should all be so lucky…mostly), but its author, Adrianqiano, ends with a deft, telling touch:

“When you hear Bobby break into 'Oh What A Beautiful Morning' at the end of the song and he gets to the line 'Everything’s going my way,' tell me that you don’t get the chills."

The Rest of the Story
While Bobby Bloom didn’t quite struggle, he comes off as someone lurking in the orbit of some of the biggest names of the era. A Brooklyn kid, he got into the industry about a half decade prior, but on the wrong-end of the doo-wop era with a group called The Imaginations that didn’t go much of anywhere. He had a decent ear for songwriting, though, and caught his break when he co-wrote “Mony Mony” for (the inescapable) Tommy James and the Shondells. That one caught the attention of one of the bubblegum pop era’s biggest, fattest wheels, Jeff Barry, the man who thrived from the girl-group boom - e.g., “Da Do Ron Ron,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “Chapel of Love” - including working with the legendary (lunatic) Phil Spector - e.g., “Be My Baby.” With his wife, Ellen Greenwich, collaborating they become one of the dominant songwriting teams of the mid-to-late-1960s…at least until their relationship caught fire and they flamed out (call it a hard lesson in working with your spouse). I could write about Barry forever, obviously - I haven’t even gotten to The Archies yet, never mind The Monkees - but this is Bloom’s story, so let’s get back to that, or at least what’s left of it.

One Hit No More, No. 45: Alive 'n' Kickin', Mississippi by Way of Brooklyn and Tommy James

Don't knock it. You always get a crowd.

The Hit
I went into this one knowing neither the band - Alive ‘n’ Kickin’ - nor their very lonely hit - “Tighter, Tighter.” Featuring soulful vocals, a nice pop melody (more later), and some smart flourishes (e.g., the shimmer-echo guitar riff that bridges between the lead vocals between verses, or the horns that play under the chorus), it’s not a bad song. And it sounds familiar for a reason

Tommy James wrote it for them and as a bit of make-up gesture. He originally offered them “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” but he liked it too much to pass it off. That was a good call too, because it gave Tommy James and the Shondells one of the hits that anchored 1969’s Crimson & Clover (one of five, as it happens; helluva(n) album). “Tighter, Tighter” gave Alive ‘n’ Kickin’ a big one too. It hit No. 7.

Oh, and they also shared a label and a management team. If you know a little about Tommy James’ relationship to his label, you’re that much closer to understanding one reason why Alive ‘n’ Kickin’ walked away from the music business, if only for a while.

The Rest of the Story
The band formed in Brooklyn, NY, all as teenagers, and they pulled together their act and sound in Dave Shearer’s (guitar) basement. Bruce Sudano (keyboards), Woody Wilson (bass), Vito Albano (I think; drums), and Jeff Miller (more keyboards) laid down the music for two lead vocalists, Pepe Cardona and Sandy Toper (to clarify, a woman). What they put together had a 60s-hangover vibe, a mix of (to my ear) roots rock and funk with the keyboard/organ sounds as a kind of foundation. If I had to peg a place where you’ve heard it before, I’d go with B-movies from the era and about three-four years after.

The connection to Tommy James came through Sandy Toder’s sister, who was “tight” with Tommy James’ wife, and that opened doors for them. Sudano and Wilson opened the door a little further by helping Tommy James write “Balls of Fire” (while both still teenagers, btw) and, somewhere in there, he passed them “Tighter, Tighter.” I assume Tommy James then directed them to Roulette Records, and Morris Levy - who was also connected, but in the mob sense - which means everyone involved probably heard Levy line up dirty work at least once (Tommy James tells great stories about this fairly early into a very long interview).

One Hit No More, No. 44: Norman Greenbaum & a Series of Accidents

He thanks you for the royalties, I'm sure.

The Hit
Somewhere in my late 20s, I remember lamenting to someone over how much I hated the idea of Bible thumpers laying claim to the beautiful, blues boogie riff that plays under Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” (found the original video). I’ve mellowed to a point where I just ignore evangelical Christian pop culture because it always tells the same damn story (e.g., person has problems, they find Jesus, Jesus makes it better, the end. Every. Damn. Time).

I never struggled to get through “Spirit in the Sky,” though, at least not till it reached a suffocating level of ubiquity by way of oldies’ radio play and movie soundtracks, which tells you how far a riff straight from heaven can carry a song. The fuzzed-up snarl on the guitar gives it a nice crunchiness too…only the song didn’t come straight from heaven.

The Rest of the Story
“It wasn’t my religion; I just did it. I didn’t think twice about it. I took some of the seriousness out of it, but I didn’t do it as a joke or against anyone. I guess people can take offense to almost anything. There was the song about the plastic Jesus on your dashboard. They liked that one.”

“[Now], quite a few churches have put it into their services and they sing it quite often. So it turned out OK. To be blunt, I don’t think it’s on the shit list.”
- Norman Greenbaum, Rolling Stone, January 2020 (and here’s that song about plastic Jesus)

As Wikipedia’s entry notes, Greenbaum was raised “an observant Jew.” It also implies he remains observant, but he says otherwise in Rolling Stones’“’Spirit in the Sky’ at 50” retrospective, published earlier this long, awful year. He had to learn a little about Christianity just to write what he did and didn't satisfy everyone; he still gets the odd grievance by first-class mail complaining about the line, “Never been a sinner, I’ve never sinned,” and that’s where the reference to people taking offense comes from.

One Hit No More, No. 43: Frijid Pink, Who Were Named by Their Parents

Decided to roll with what might have been...

The Hit
I’d never heard Frijid Pink’s “House of the Rising Sun” until last week and…it’s fine, a sound spin on what I learned was their particular mash-up of influences. I’ll cover that story below, but think hard rock meets the sounds of Detroit.

I also learned that Frijid Pink recorded that cover as filler for their debut album - i.e., they had some empty space to fill on the LP, so they producer asked them if they had anything else. They’d been working up their take on “House of the Rising Sun” for their live shows, and for exactly the same reason. They knew it, though, and recorded the album version on the first take. Even if it doesn’t top the most popular version* (I assume), it’s a nice serving of fuzzed-up acid-rock typical of the burned-out come-down from the 1960s. And the theme is timeless, obviously…I just struggle to accept someone getting famous on the back of a cover, but accept that’s more personal bias than a judgment of artistry.

(* I’m confident this list isn’t even half-thorough, but it looks like Georgia Bell Turner recorded the first version in 1937 (on bad tech, from the sounds of it), Bob Dylan revived it for his debut, and then The Animals played the version that I think most people know.)

It hit big, rising as high as No. 7 on the Billboard, where it stayed for 13 weeks; it made loud noises in Europe (11 weeks at No. 1 in Germany) and Canada. It gave a gold record to a rock band from Detroit for the first time, thereby (arguably) putting Detroit rock on the map, you’re welcome, KISS. The accidents continued from there, not all of them happy…

The Rest of the Story
It starts with two kids who picked up music early and on their own, drummer Rick Stevers and bassist Tom Harris. By the time they reached high school, circa 1967, they had an actual touring band made up of kids they own and managed by Stevers’ parents, Clyde and Clara. They played as the Detroit Vibrations and mainly as a cover act, if one with ambition: they kept tabs on every song that came out and prided themselves on being the first band to perform it on the Detroit party/lounge/whatever circuit. They rode that into something like a residency at The Chatterbox, their hometown hot-spot in Allen Park, Michigan, by winning one battle of the bands after another.

One Hit No More, No. 42: Mountain, Woodstock and the Other Side of "Mississippi Queen"

West did cut an impressive figure...

The Hit
Badly as I want to kick this off with, “you know what’s coming the second you hear that cowbell,” I would have never heard Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen” if they didn’t have it on one of the editions of Rock Band (2, I think). I have literally never heard this song any other time (and I linked to the only video I possibly could in tribute).

That said, a particular detail in the game-play of Rock Band - at least on the drums, the only “instrument” I ever so much as looked at - makes the tune a happy memory. I got through the easy setting on the drums on something close to the first take, and even the first handful of games on the moderate setting. “Mississippi Queen,” as it happens, is the first song in that run that really forces the player to get their legs and arms moving together but separately. It took about a dozen takes to get past it for the first time, but it also got me over the hump on that fairly-specific physical challenge, and that might have been the first thing I’d taught my body to do since my late 20s. It hasn’t come in handy yet, but it’s in the back-pocket…

The Rest of the Story
In a word, dramatic. The mystique of Mountain begins with where they played their third-ever live performance. It was Woodstock, a gig they appear to have picked up by way of sharing a booking agent with Jimi Hendrix. Jimi, of course, had one of his iconic moments at Woodstock, but here’s a recreation of the scene from a 2019 retrospective in Goldmine Magazine:

“The band’s close to classic lineup, sans soon-to-be-enlisted drummer Corky Laing, ripped through a set largely culled from guitarist Leslie West’s recently released solo album entitled “Mountain.” The wide-eyed, expressive and impressively built West manned center stage as if the fates conspired to place him there at that moment and time, while former Cream producer Felix Pappalardi stood semi-shadowed to his right unleashing furious bass runs in accompaniment. It is little stretch to say the massive crowd heard nothing quite like this before.”

One Hit No More, No. 41, Eric Burdon & War: The Burden of Burdon

Necessary springboard?

The Hit
I assume, without investigation, that the context in which you first heard 1970’s “Spill the Wine” went almost all the way in terms of shaping how seriously you take it. Even that assumes that anyone takes that song seriously…

Of which, I’ve now confirmed, via Lonnie Jordan, but to multiple sources, the actual lyrics to the chorus of “Spill the Wine.” In his own words (from a decent 2018 interview with Entertainment Today):

“You know, in recording “Spill the Wine” he improvised the song. The chorus [‘spill the wine, take that pearl’], people think it is ‘girl.’ But it is ‘pearl,’ that’s the lady’s nether regions.”

For the record, learning this information did not impress my wife. Still, the part about Eric Burdon, formally and made famous via The Animals, improvising the daffy story at the heart of the song makes the whole thing a little more impressive. It’s hardly high art - it’s more a “holy shit” brag about the things Burdon gets to do (and a bit Playboy cliché), and a “story” only in that sense - but that’s one hell of a jam playing under it. The instruments War played were old as rock ‘n’ roll, but they got something new out of them - at least in actually popular music, aka, the stuff that charts. “Spill the Wine” rose high enough to put Eric Burdon & War on the map and to set them touring across Europe over 1970 and 1971…

…not bad for a band that came together half by design and half by accident. Oh, and to finish the thought, I think I first heard this song in my early 20s and it was presented ironically. No offense to all concerned, but that really stuck. Once you're the butt of a joke, and for whatever reason...

The Rest of the Story
“It is hard to put a label on us, it is hard to put a library card on us. Tower Records had us in a lot of departments, jazz, reggae, RnB. Universal Street Music, that is what I call us.”

First, that's the framing of War as a band out of the way. Second, I was more interested in War than Eric Burdon & War after hearing four albums all of once. I’ve still never made it through The Black-Man’s Burdon, their 1970 follow-up to Eric Burdon Declares War, and I know I never will, not unless someone pays me to do it (note: it wouldn’t take a lot). Critiques of the album aside, Burdon checked out after they recorded it - and in the middle of a European tour. I’ve read a couple reasons for the split and, as much as I like the artistic romance of “he got bored and left,” Jordan told a gentler version to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2019:

One Hit No More, No. 40: Beware the Ides of March...

Also a little conflicted...

The Hit
The more I listen to The Ides of March’s “Vehicle,” the more convinced I am that I’ve heard it. On the other hand, it didn’t ring a bell of any kind the first time I heard it.

Assuming you haven’t heard it, it packs a big sound - lots of horns, a Chicago-funk bass line, the rhythm churns, some really solid call-response - the whole thing just screams “ANTHEM.” This is the sound of kicking ass, chewing bubblegum and naming names…which only makes the song’s origin more notable. The songwriter, Jim Peterik, had an ex-girlfriend who called him for rides after the break-up and he obliged often for it to inspire a song; as he phrased the concept in an (always) undated interview with Best Classic Bands, “all I am to you is your vehicle.” In an ending that’s both fitting and that gets at how relationships really work, they reconciled some time after and eventually got married. I’ve found that people who aren’t sure they want to be together have a way of finding excuses to bump into one another…

The Rest of the Story
Before digging in, I need to get something out of the way: I did not like The Ides of March. I made it through their catalog just four times before tapping out and walking away. There’s nothing wrong with having a bias; the real crime is hiding them for ulterior motives. The importance of that idea will come up later, but also in daily life. Moving on…

The Ides of March came up - and I mean that literally - in (or near) Chicago, Illinois (Berwyn, Illinois). The best way I can think to explain that is to note that, 1) when they dropped the name “The Shon-Dels,” they found inspiration from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which they were reading at the time for high school, and 2) the band’s first hit, “You Wouldn’t Listen to Me” (No. 42 on The Billboard and No. 7 regionally, so not bad) was written during an all-nighter at Peterik’s 15th birthday party. Also, one of their moms, Ann Millas, was the one who arranged their break-trhough meeting with Mercury Records. (For reference, I found most of the finer anecdotes in this post in MusicTAP’s 2020 interview with Peterik.)

One Hit No More, No. 39, Shocking Blue: "Venus" Wore a Wig...

O.G.

The Hit
While it’s not unheard of in this project (see, Syndicate of Sound post), Shocking Blue’s “Venus” provides the rare case where it’s fair to ask people whether they heard their version first or Banarama’s. I know my answer - Banarama’s (also, The Divinyls on the one above) - and I refuse to feel shame about it…especially now that former, and now deceased drummer Cor van der Beek confessed that they “borrowed” (he straight-up says “stole”) the guitar riffs from The Beatles.

That said, I agree with van der Beek that Shocking Blue’s version beats all the others.

The song dropped in 1970 and shot to No. 1 on the Billboard in the States and blew up just about everywhere else besides. Anchored by an electric piano(/organ?) riff, a light funk shuffle rhythm plays under while curly-cue guitars hooks play over it: it’s music made for go-go dancing. And the vocals - imperious, almost demanding worship - roll it all together into a celebration of feminine power and/or mystique. “Goddess on the mountain-top/burning like a silver flame…”

The Rest of the Story
Because this was a case where I wanted so much more, I’m a little disappointed that there isn’t much available on Shocking Blue. Three of the four original members are dead - a couple of them for some time - and the only living member is, by now, quite old and “very media-shy.” That just leaves talking about what’s available.

A guitarist/sitarist named Robbie van Leeuwen started Shocking Blue in The Hague, The Netherlands (note: I often feel like I’m doing it wrong when I type “The” before “Netherlands”), with van der Beek (again, drums) in 1967 with Klassje van der Waal on bass, and a guy named Fred de Wilde on lead vocals. The band’s original line-up recorded a couple singles that no one remembers (but that one can look up at this point), and that was enough to move de Wilde to chuck the band for the Dutch Army. van Leeuwen found Mariska Veres singing in a club and the rest is history.

The more I read about musicians, the more I see that, for a lot of them, the story doesn’t get more complicated than, “we (or he or she) wrote a bunch of songs, and we toured a lot, probably more than we wanted to, but that's the job.” A vast under-belly teems and writhes under that bare narrative - e.g., as revealed in a 1988 (subtitled) interview with Veres and van der Beek, it’s a blur of hiring body-guards to keep half-crazed fans from grabbing you and or cutting your hair (or wig; fun fact, Veres wore wigs) in Japan - and a band doesn't draw half-crazed fans without a hit, and Shocking Blue did manage that. Some parts of the band lasted until 1971 - when van der Beek and van der Wal checked out - while van Leeuwen made it 1974; Veres was the last hold-out, and small wonder. If “Venus” is all you know, those vocals really catch your ear...

One Hit No More, No. 38, The Spiral Starecase: A Long, Hard, Corruptly-Managed Road

They had one freakin' guy on sax. WTAF?

The Hit
There’s a song called “Pickin’ a Chicken” by Eve Boswell that’s defiantly upbeat enough that it strikes me as a song of intense denial, the strained smile that precedes light serial killing, etc. Of course I don’t really think that, and also assume Boswell never killed anyone (that she didn’t mean to), but it’s just strident enough to keep me from buying the premise.

The Spiral Starecase’s “More Today than Yesterday” prompts a similar version of that physical reaction. Whatever qualities it has musically get lost in the way that all the bright, soaring notes come off as a parody of happiness, especially when paired with Pat Upton’s crisp, ringing vocals. Upton wrote the song and with the encouragement of one of the band’s early managers, a guy from Columbia named Gary Usher, and there’s an anecdote about the writing that I picked out of a post to an entertainment law firm’s website (McLane & Wong), who picked the quotes out of Upton’s book about his time with The Spiral Starecase and it’s predecessor act, The Fydallions (sometimes, the Fedalions, but only in LA, apparently):

“The last time I saw Gary was in Vegas and I had just written 'More'. I played it for him and it only had two verses. He said it needed another verse, so I wrote another.”

I find that priceless on two levels. First, the fact he (and I believe others) refer to The Spiral Starecase’s hit single as, “More,” because the nickname makes it feel like another member of the band. Second, what was the hold up on that third verse? In his defense, however, that third verse does feel a little more polished…

The Rest of the Story
“…with a full horn section to replicate the sound of their biggest hits.”

I lifted that quote from Wikipedia’s“just the facts, ma’am” entry on The Spiral Starecase. It’s a decent history, and it reconciles some inconsistencies between some other sources in a way that feels either satisfying or correct, but it also glosses over how long and hard this band worked for its shot. Their reward: getting screwed over by management and told that they didn’t look right by Columbia Records (but watch the performance for "More Today" above...that's hip?). Not all members had the last laugh in the end, but some of them did. Despite dropping just one album that anyone cared about - this was after “More Today” (see? not so hard) - parts of the band toured until the 1980s. And, for reasons that defy mathematics, they somehow squeezed seven goddamn compilation albums out of that one album. To go back to the beginning…

Two members of the band - Upton and saxophonist, Dick Lopes - got together a band for an Air Force talent show at the station where they were based near Sacramento, CA. They used the Fydallions named even then and set out to build a bigger better band for Sacramento’s civilian scene. Bobby Raymond came into the line-up on bass guitar, Harvey Kaye on keyboards, and Vinnie Parello on drums; Upton played lead guitar and sang while Lopes stuck to the saxophone. Low-hanging documentation on The Fydallions is low, but I did find a contemporary news segment (I love you google as much as I hate you) that shows them playing the scenic California capital’s Old Tropicana Club and, honestly, I would have enjoyed listening to that band a lot more than The Spiral Starecase, but the assignment chooses the bands in this project, not the other way around. Moving on…

This is one of those cases where they phrase “one-hit wonder” gets under my skin a bit, because The Fydallions paid 4-5 years worth of steep dues - working the San Francisco scene, five-hour lounge shows in Vegas, auditioning via random recordings and waiting for the phone call in Los Angeles. They added some new members in 1966 - Gene Austin (more bass), Mark Barret (more drums…srsly?), and Al Sebay on electric guitar, but otherwise bumped around like that for some time when Columbia discovered them, signed them, demanded they change both their name and look (too conservative, they said, which wasn’t wrong in 1969, and yet...). It’s worth talking about management a bit, because that looms large.

An undated post in RebeatMag’s “Story Behind” series gives the fullest tallying of their problems with managers - equipment bought on a stolen credit card then repossessed before a show, skimping on weekly payments for a PA system during their residency at The Flamingo Sky Lounge in Vegas…also, repossessed. And all this happened before “More” (fuck it; going with it) became a hit. The burn-out and bickering among the band was bad enough by then that no one had the endurance to stick it out. Basically, five striving years as The Fydallions ended in 18 stressful months as The Spiral Starecase. If there’s a silver lining to all that, they got to open for bands like Three Dog Night, Sly and the Family Stone and Creedence Clearwater Revival; even if they got only three songs before the proverbial cane yanked them off the stage, five guys from the Air Force wrote a hit and played with the stars. Now, to close on some happier stuff…for the most part…

About the Sampler
Once again, there is no sampler, because only the one album. While it looks like The Spiral Starecase put out two albums under the Columbia label - one with Usher and one, post “More” with his replacement, the perfectly-named Sonny Knight (screams "producer"), Spotify only had the latter - named More Today Than Yesterday - which is mostly previously released 45s cobbled together into an LP. To its credit, the entertainment law site (link above) does the best job of mapping the tangled path. For the first pitch, Usher tried “Baby What I Mean” backed with “Makin’ Up My Mind” - both songs, significantly, not written by the band. [Ed. - Fun Note: of all the members of The Spiral Starecase, only Upton and Kaye play a role in the studio version of "More Today."] Next, they tried “Broken-Hearted Man” (which Dick Clark himself declared “the second single”) with “More Today.” While I can’t say for sure which 45 ultimately broke them into the Billboard (and Cashbox and Canadian charts), one source or the other (trust me, it’s not important) named “No One for Me to Turn To” as they b-side for “More Today.”

As much as I respect The Spiral Starecase for their time-in, I’d only recommend them to someone who likes post-political, horn-heavy late-60s/early70s pop music. The more I look the past of American popular music, the more convinced I become that some version of Tin Pan Alley continues to this day, coopting and polishing the sounds that come up from the original stuff that bubbles up and turning them into Marketable Commodities. I can’t argue that The Spiral Starecase offered anything truly novel to the American music scene - and that goes back to their days as The Fydallions - but they did write at least one song that, whatever I think of it, still lingers in the zeitgeist. I used to care about how all that worked, but who really gives a shit? A random guy serving time in the Air Force wrote a song that made people happy then and it keeps making them happy now.

Crap. I forgot the post-script, which matters because it has two reasonably happy endings. It was Kaye (the keyboardist) that reformed the band in Vegas and that played all those gigs (and, again, somehow conjured seven compilation albums out of one actual album; then again, do pay attention to the dates they were released and look for the pop culture brands they associated with; money, baby!) all the way to the 1980s. We’d all do well to remember that what passes for “good taste” isn’t universal. Upton caught a break of his own when he became a session player with Ricky Nelson. Moreover, in Upton’s own words he gets “more today than yesterday” in royalties from his song.