 |
| Fuckers would tangle up if you so much as looked at 'em... |
The Hit
During high school, and before developing an operating record store M.O., I picked up the odd impulse-buy cassette tape at local gas stations. If I recognized enough of the artists and had about $5 left after buying gas (and probably junk food), I'd get about a month's worth of "fresh-to-me" music out of the good ones (the Dutch imports, though; jesus christ). The education as to what’s what came from classic rock radio and, at some damn point, the Freedom Rock compilation they sold on late-night TV.
I stumbled into The American Breed’s “Bend Me, Shape Me” on a gas station cassettes, apparently. It’s a good late 60s pop tune (1968), nice (literally) galloping rhythm, nice layering of horns over guitars, etc. – and I swear I’ve heard recordings where they really juiced the rhythm parts (or my speakers just sucked and/or accidentally improved on the original). The American Breed neither wrote the song nor recorded it first: the writing team of Scott English and Larry Weiss wrote it, while a guy named Bill Traut (who has another cameo later) graced it with those horns. An all-female band called The Shape got first crack it at (can't find that, so here are The Models doing it), but it was another act – The Outsiders (of “Time Won’t Let Me” fame) – who had the best shot at knicking it out from under The American Breed.
The Rest of the Story
During high school, and before developing an operating record store M.O., I picked up the odd impulse-buy cassette tape at local gas stations. If I recognized enough of the artists and had about $5 left after buying gas (and probably junk food), I'd get about a month's worth of "fresh-to-me" music out of the good ones (the Dutch imports, though; jesus christ). The education as to what’s what came from classic rock radio and, at some damn point, the Freedom Rock compilation they sold on late-night TV.
I stumbled into The American Breed’s “Bend Me, Shape Me” on a gas station cassettes, apparently. It’s a good late 60s pop tune (1968), nice (literally) galloping rhythm, nice layering of horns over guitars, etc. – and I swear I’ve heard recordings where they really juiced the rhythm parts (or my speakers just sucked and/or accidentally improved on the original). The American Breed neither wrote the song nor recorded it first: the writing team of Scott English and Larry Weiss wrote it, while a guy named Bill Traut (who has another cameo later) graced it with those horns. An all-female band called The Shape got first crack it at (can't find that, so here are The Models doing it), but it was another act – The Outsiders (of “Time Won’t Let Me” fame) – who had the best shot at knicking it out from under The American Breed.
The Rest of the Story
The kindest and rudest thing I can say about The American Breed is that key members got sidetracked making commercial jingles (and quite a few of them, and in The Bigs – e.g, writing/singing for Coca Cola and American Airlines) during the band’s hey-day. That these guys knew their way around a song well enough to turn that into a day job is the kind side; the rude side comes with a sneer at the commercialism of the overall project (yeah, I like the “artistes”) and they fact they didn’t write their biggest hits. (Don’t worry, the bona fides come later.)
The band started in Cicero, Illinois as Gary & The Knight Lites – and as a rare inter-racial band. The “Gary” of the group was Gary Loizzo, who sang lead and played (I think) rhythm guitar, and Charles Colbert, Jr. (bass/vocals), Al Ciner (guitar/vocals), and Jim Michalak (drums) rounded out the original line up. They did, in fact, have a body of work, but it took an assist from "a freak snowstorm" to turn their luck. That bought Traut time to play it for a Mercury VP named Kenny Myers (or Meyers), who liked it well enough to sign them to a subsidiary, but not enough to let them keep the (clearly) dated name (Loizzo said they pulled The American Breed out of a hat) or with leading with their own material. They fed them songs starting with “I Don’t Think You Know Me” by a writing team one sees a lot during the era, Carole King and Gerry Goffin (which is probably my favorite of The American Breed). That became a minor hit, as did “Green Light” (a gem from the time before consent), but “Bend Me, Shape Me” blew up to No. 5, sent them around the Dick Clark TV-circuit, playing American Bandstand with Pink Floyd, etc.
The thing with commercials started shortly thereafter and, because I don't hear or read much about them touring, maybe their ambition didn’t go that way. Against that, they didn’t sit still; they added a keyboardist named Kevin Murphy and a singer named Paulette McWilliams and, per Wikipedia, they made “a move towards a more R&B funk sound” with a single titled, “Hunky Funky”; moreover, Loizzo took a swing at kick-starting the band in 1970 – “Can’t Make It Without You” was the single (and I can't find that one) – but all concerned retired The American Breed and did their own thing. And bigger things.
Colbert, Murphy, McWilliams and someone named Lee Graziano went through a couple projects, and dumped McWilliams for Chaka Khan, and wound up as Rufus (who will get picked over very soon, now that I’ve placed “Tell Me Something Good”). From what I gather, Ciner played with Rufus for a bit, before playing in Three Dog Night for a while.
That said, Loizzo makes a strong case for the biggest second act. It appears he did all that commercial jingle work and parlayed what he learned to become a producer – a big one too, at least around Chicago. Traut again made the connection by introducing a young Dennis DeYoung to Loizzo. What started with Loizzo helping DeYoung goose his original compositions into something he could serve up to his band, Styx, ended with him producing Styx’s biggest albums (e.g., Cornerstone, Paradise Theater and (because, of course it was Grammy-nominated) Kilroy Was Here), not to mention, (parts of) REO Speedwagon’s You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish, Survivor’s Premonition…and then some more stuff for DeYoung and his former (estranged) bandmate, Tommy Shaw. (Delightful story, btw, I wrote about it.) So, yeah, it’s probably fair to call Loizzo a major hitter in a minor market, but he did produce at least six triple-platinum albums (think it’s nine in all, maybe more), and he inspired tributes like this one by (later) Styx drummer, Todd Sucherman:
“He was a man of exceptional taste, wonderful musicianship, eagle sharp ears, but most of all he was a shining example as how to conduct yourself as a man, a professional, a husband and father. In 20 years I never saw him lose his cool or raise his voice to anyone, and believe me, the road can be frustrating at times. He just made everyone feel good.”
The author of that post added this right after that quote: “Can we please cure cancer? Enough already.” Loizzo died of pancreatic cancer in January 2016. Whatever I think of The American Breed – briefly, best taste possible, I’ve heard their kind of music for decades at this point and they didn't do anything memorable with it – members of that band, living and dead, did leave a respectable legacy. Even McWilliams, existed in both The American Breed and Rufus at the wrong time, shared the stage and studio space with some major players. For people the more or less accidentally famous, that’s a least a double, maybe even a triple.
About the Sampler
I could probably crawl around Spotify and stumble into some of their later material, but I didn't find enough variety from The American Breed to make it worthwhile, so I’m gonna leave it at “Hunky Funky” (love that name). On the plus side, they do have a greatest hits collection for anyone interested in seeing what else they did. For what it’s worth, I’d call it not much – i.e., relatively generic, commercial-market pop rock from the late 60s - fairly sunny tonally, nice layered vocals…just pleasant and mildly troubled at most. If you like that sound, dig in! From a cultural point of view, the sexual politics, while not omnipresent or even central to what they’re about, they are…call it from another time and set of assumptions.
Source(s)
Loizzo Video Interview (2012) (best source for how he got with Styx)
PopMatters interview with Paulette McWilliams (2014) (that’s a top-tier backing career)
No comments:
Post a Comment