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| What I'm calling his prime. |
The Hit
Billy Swan wasn't a household name in his time, but his 1974 hit, “I Can Help,” reached somewhere north of 2 million households. The twangy sprint of a guitar riff that opens it gives way to an RMI organ - one Swan got from Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge as a wedding gift - laying glowing, sustained notes over a galloping rhythm straight out of the 50s. It’s very much a throwback number and, once you know Swan’s history, the reference makes sense. The single’s popularity makes just as much sense, dropping as it did at the front end of a long bout of 50s nostalgia that started with American Graffiti and continued with Happy Days, Grease, Sha Na Na, and so on.
I also came out of a particular cultural moment, as an entry in Stereogum’s No. 1’s series notes:
“’I Can Help’ first blew up on country radio, mostly because the country establishment of the ’70s had absorbed ’50s rockabilly sounds, the same way that the country establishment of today has absorbed ’70s and ’80s soft-rock sounds.”
Stereogum is less than gentle about the quality of Swan’s voice - “[his] voice is weedy and flat, and he sounds like he’s just keeping up with the song” - but they treat the song kindly and, in a repeating joke, bless it as “a good Samaritan seduction song.” For clarification’s sake, that means “[you’re] trying to convince this other person that they need you.”
The song’s moment was Swan’s moment as well. He recorded a lot more material and, given everything, had a decent career, but he never scored another big hit. Going the other way, Swan’s single had at least one very famous admirer and, if you buy an anecdote he dropped in an (undated) interview with Classic Bands, it enjoyed at least one epic moment:
“According to an interview I read with May Pang, John Lennon once served as a [DJ] at a party and played ‘I Can Help’ over and over again.”
The Rest of the Story
Born William Lance Swan in Cape Girardeau in 1942, Swan’s career got off to a promising start. With encouragement from a high school music teacher, he became a multi-instrumentalist and started writing songs before he graduated. By the early 60s, Swan had a band named Mirt Mirly & the Rhythm Steppers for a vehicle and the attention of Bill Black. Black already had an enviable career in music - he backed Elvis Presley on bass from the literal beginning - but he’d decided to get into recording by the time he met Swan. Black liked what he heard from Mirt Mirly, et. al., and invited them to his Lyn-Lou Studios to record a song called “Lover Please.” That single bounced around between a couple singers before it landed in Clyde McPhatter’s lap. McPhatter wasn’t too keen to record it - according to a 2015 interview with Tom Meros, the arrangement was that McPhatter would get one song he liked for every song his producer liked - but it still gave him a No. 7 hit and Swan his first hit as a songwriter.
Feeling a little momentum at his back, Swan relocated to Memphis to continue working with Black as a songwriter. His career didn’t exactly take off, but Swan rather earnestly connected with rock royalty, up to and including the King himself. A tourist’s trip to Graceland saw him bump into Elvis’ uncle (on his mother’s side, I believe), Travis Smith, who, after a short chat near the gates, offered to put Swan up in the room one of his sons just vacated. Becoming friends with Smith’s sons put him in Elvis’ social orbit, so he had a chance to hang out with the early entourage for a time. Related, at least half the interviews I found with Swan focused more on his thoughts/impressions of Elvis than anything Swan himself did (e.g., this post to The Elvis Forum, which, among other anecdotes, talks about the time Elvis (already on speed, btw) split his pants at a roller rink). He didn’t do much during that time besides hang out and have fun, but Black’s untimely death from a brain tumor in 1965 really derailed his career. As Stereogum puts it, “Swan just kind of floated around the music business for a few years” from there.
The late ‘60s saw him looking for new opportunities in Nashville. If nothing else, he hung around Columbia’s studios often enough that they eventually offered him a job as an “engineer’s assistant” - in this case, a lofty title for a gopher who mostly cleaned up between sessions and got food for the engineers and artists. It did, however, put him at the heart of the business and, in a remarkable pile of events, Swan 1) happened to quit his job during Bob Dylans’ first week recording Blonde on Blonde, and 2) pass the same job onto Kris Kristofferson, who had just arrived in Nashville looking for work and passed Swan on his way out the door. Kristofferson made more of the opportunity, of course, but not everyone can land a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s front lawn and offer him “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” now can they?
To Swan’s credit, he kept finding little opportunities or they kept finding him. He continued writing music and landed a handful of writing credits with some of country’s biggest names of the time - e.g., Conway Twitty, Mel Tillis and Waylon Jennings. 1969 saw his rare attempt a producing with a “swamp rock” artist, Tony Joe White. Swan went on to produce White’s first three albums, a run that included his biggest hit “Polk Salad Annie.” If you take the time to read Swan’s interview with Classic Bands, you’ll encounter one hell of a humble and honest guy; it’s rare to see anyone in a business built that heavily on self-promotion so consistently down-play the people he knew and his role in making music.
Given all that, it’s satisfying that Swan got his moment in 1974. Stereogum’s take on his voice wasn’t unfair - the relevant producer, Chip Young, agreed to record “I Can Help” because he thought Swan’s voice had the same “quality” as Ringo Starr’s - but Swan knocked out his hit in just two takes and, reportedly, with his German Shephard tugging at his leg the entire time. As noted in the first section, Swan continued to record, only to see the public respond with a shrug. I think he got minor traction with another song or two - I’ve got “Everything’s the Same (Ain’t Nothing Changed)” tugging at my memory, but can’t point to the source - but his solo career ended as abruptly as it started.
On the plus side, Swan found steady work for years playing bass for Kristofferson, which just goes to show what a good turn can do. He also played a 1979 festival in Havana, Cuba - the “historic Havana Jam” as Wikipedia dubs it (and some of the artists back that up) - and got a little project going in the early and mid-80s called Black Tie with Randy Meisner or The Eagles (and a couple other artists). And, if you check the beginning of the Classic Bands interview, he was still landing gigs both in the States plus some dates in Europe. In fact, he was about to go on stage and perform right after that 2015 interview with Tom Meros. So, yeah, Billy Swan had a career in music, even if not everyone noticed. And good on ‘im.
About the Sampler
I linked to the hit and the (alleged) near-hit up above, but I also slipped Swan’s version of “Lover Please” onto the sampler (taste is taste, but McPhatter’s is better). For anyone who’s interested, he recorded a lot and Spotify has surely has close to all of it. Both this post and the sampler stuck to his prime years - which, by this clock, ended with Swan’s 1978 album, You’re Ok, I’m Ok, repped on the sampler by “Bloodstream.” I also pulled a couple songs from Swan’s 1976 eponymous album with “Just Want to Taste Your Wine” (note the opening) and “Number One.”
His 1974 release - which, if I’m reading the timeline right was originally titled Rock on With Rhythm - was re-titled I Can Help at some point. That included his biggest numbers, but I threw on a couple others to give a richer taste of his mighty works, including a slow suffering take on Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel” and another song titled “P.M.S. (Post Mortem Sickness),” which, 1) I couldn’t resist for the title, and 2) plays in the same vein as his Elvis cover.
If I had to recommend any Billy Swan album, I’d go with his 1975 follow-up to his debut, Rock ‘n’ Roll Moon. That included “Everything’s the Same,” but I also included “Stranger” (which gets a nice boost from Spanish horns at the end), “Home of the Blues” (borrowed from Johnny Cash, but solid 70s singer/songwriter vibe), “You’re the Pain (in My Heart)” (heavy for him, especially the bass/rhythm), and a pleasant little loping number “Rock and Roll Moon Blues (Pt. 1).”
Billy Swan didn’t have “star” chops - the swing Elvis gets into his later version, both musically and vocally shows the difference, but Elvis is a natural - but he wrote solid songs for his time. And they wears them well. Good Samaritan seduction...
Till the next one…
Billy Swan wasn't a household name in his time, but his 1974 hit, “I Can Help,” reached somewhere north of 2 million households. The twangy sprint of a guitar riff that opens it gives way to an RMI organ - one Swan got from Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge as a wedding gift - laying glowing, sustained notes over a galloping rhythm straight out of the 50s. It’s very much a throwback number and, once you know Swan’s history, the reference makes sense. The single’s popularity makes just as much sense, dropping as it did at the front end of a long bout of 50s nostalgia that started with American Graffiti and continued with Happy Days, Grease, Sha Na Na, and so on.
I also came out of a particular cultural moment, as an entry in Stereogum’s No. 1’s series notes:
“’I Can Help’ first blew up on country radio, mostly because the country establishment of the ’70s had absorbed ’50s rockabilly sounds, the same way that the country establishment of today has absorbed ’70s and ’80s soft-rock sounds.”
Stereogum is less than gentle about the quality of Swan’s voice - “[his] voice is weedy and flat, and he sounds like he’s just keeping up with the song” - but they treat the song kindly and, in a repeating joke, bless it as “a good Samaritan seduction song.” For clarification’s sake, that means “[you’re] trying to convince this other person that they need you.”
The song’s moment was Swan’s moment as well. He recorded a lot more material and, given everything, had a decent career, but he never scored another big hit. Going the other way, Swan’s single had at least one very famous admirer and, if you buy an anecdote he dropped in an (undated) interview with Classic Bands, it enjoyed at least one epic moment:
“According to an interview I read with May Pang, John Lennon once served as a [DJ] at a party and played ‘I Can Help’ over and over again.”
The Rest of the Story
Born William Lance Swan in Cape Girardeau in 1942, Swan’s career got off to a promising start. With encouragement from a high school music teacher, he became a multi-instrumentalist and started writing songs before he graduated. By the early 60s, Swan had a band named Mirt Mirly & the Rhythm Steppers for a vehicle and the attention of Bill Black. Black already had an enviable career in music - he backed Elvis Presley on bass from the literal beginning - but he’d decided to get into recording by the time he met Swan. Black liked what he heard from Mirt Mirly, et. al., and invited them to his Lyn-Lou Studios to record a song called “Lover Please.” That single bounced around between a couple singers before it landed in Clyde McPhatter’s lap. McPhatter wasn’t too keen to record it - according to a 2015 interview with Tom Meros, the arrangement was that McPhatter would get one song he liked for every song his producer liked - but it still gave him a No. 7 hit and Swan his first hit as a songwriter.
Feeling a little momentum at his back, Swan relocated to Memphis to continue working with Black as a songwriter. His career didn’t exactly take off, but Swan rather earnestly connected with rock royalty, up to and including the King himself. A tourist’s trip to Graceland saw him bump into Elvis’ uncle (on his mother’s side, I believe), Travis Smith, who, after a short chat near the gates, offered to put Swan up in the room one of his sons just vacated. Becoming friends with Smith’s sons put him in Elvis’ social orbit, so he had a chance to hang out with the early entourage for a time. Related, at least half the interviews I found with Swan focused more on his thoughts/impressions of Elvis than anything Swan himself did (e.g., this post to The Elvis Forum, which, among other anecdotes, talks about the time Elvis (already on speed, btw) split his pants at a roller rink). He didn’t do much during that time besides hang out and have fun, but Black’s untimely death from a brain tumor in 1965 really derailed his career. As Stereogum puts it, “Swan just kind of floated around the music business for a few years” from there.
The late ‘60s saw him looking for new opportunities in Nashville. If nothing else, he hung around Columbia’s studios often enough that they eventually offered him a job as an “engineer’s assistant” - in this case, a lofty title for a gopher who mostly cleaned up between sessions and got food for the engineers and artists. It did, however, put him at the heart of the business and, in a remarkable pile of events, Swan 1) happened to quit his job during Bob Dylans’ first week recording Blonde on Blonde, and 2) pass the same job onto Kris Kristofferson, who had just arrived in Nashville looking for work and passed Swan on his way out the door. Kristofferson made more of the opportunity, of course, but not everyone can land a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s front lawn and offer him “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” now can they?
To Swan’s credit, he kept finding little opportunities or they kept finding him. He continued writing music and landed a handful of writing credits with some of country’s biggest names of the time - e.g., Conway Twitty, Mel Tillis and Waylon Jennings. 1969 saw his rare attempt a producing with a “swamp rock” artist, Tony Joe White. Swan went on to produce White’s first three albums, a run that included his biggest hit “Polk Salad Annie.” If you take the time to read Swan’s interview with Classic Bands, you’ll encounter one hell of a humble and honest guy; it’s rare to see anyone in a business built that heavily on self-promotion so consistently down-play the people he knew and his role in making music.
Given all that, it’s satisfying that Swan got his moment in 1974. Stereogum’s take on his voice wasn’t unfair - the relevant producer, Chip Young, agreed to record “I Can Help” because he thought Swan’s voice had the same “quality” as Ringo Starr’s - but Swan knocked out his hit in just two takes and, reportedly, with his German Shephard tugging at his leg the entire time. As noted in the first section, Swan continued to record, only to see the public respond with a shrug. I think he got minor traction with another song or two - I’ve got “Everything’s the Same (Ain’t Nothing Changed)” tugging at my memory, but can’t point to the source - but his solo career ended as abruptly as it started.
On the plus side, Swan found steady work for years playing bass for Kristofferson, which just goes to show what a good turn can do. He also played a 1979 festival in Havana, Cuba - the “historic Havana Jam” as Wikipedia dubs it (and some of the artists back that up) - and got a little project going in the early and mid-80s called Black Tie with Randy Meisner or The Eagles (and a couple other artists). And, if you check the beginning of the Classic Bands interview, he was still landing gigs both in the States plus some dates in Europe. In fact, he was about to go on stage and perform right after that 2015 interview with Tom Meros. So, yeah, Billy Swan had a career in music, even if not everyone noticed. And good on ‘im.
About the Sampler
I linked to the hit and the (alleged) near-hit up above, but I also slipped Swan’s version of “Lover Please” onto the sampler (taste is taste, but McPhatter’s is better). For anyone who’s interested, he recorded a lot and Spotify has surely has close to all of it. Both this post and the sampler stuck to his prime years - which, by this clock, ended with Swan’s 1978 album, You’re Ok, I’m Ok, repped on the sampler by “Bloodstream.” I also pulled a couple songs from Swan’s 1976 eponymous album with “Just Want to Taste Your Wine” (note the opening) and “Number One.”
His 1974 release - which, if I’m reading the timeline right was originally titled Rock on With Rhythm - was re-titled I Can Help at some point. That included his biggest numbers, but I threw on a couple others to give a richer taste of his mighty works, including a slow suffering take on Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel” and another song titled “P.M.S. (Post Mortem Sickness),” which, 1) I couldn’t resist for the title, and 2) plays in the same vein as his Elvis cover.
If I had to recommend any Billy Swan album, I’d go with his 1975 follow-up to his debut, Rock ‘n’ Roll Moon. That included “Everything’s the Same,” but I also included “Stranger” (which gets a nice boost from Spanish horns at the end), “Home of the Blues” (borrowed from Johnny Cash, but solid 70s singer/songwriter vibe), “You’re the Pain (in My Heart)” (heavy for him, especially the bass/rhythm), and a pleasant little loping number “Rock and Roll Moon Blues (Pt. 1).”
Billy Swan didn’t have “star” chops - the swing Elvis gets into his later version, both musically and vocally shows the difference, but Elvis is a natural - but he wrote solid songs for his time. And they wears them well. Good Samaritan seduction...
Till the next one…
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