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| Damn... |
The Hit
I don’t know Henry Gross’ “Shannon,” but you might if you frequent pet shelter openings…I’ll get to it.
The song has good “mellow-70s-pop” bones - sparkling picked strings with nice reverb, a bass sound that literally slides between passages, gently troubled vocals…and, pow(!) a chorus powered by a falsetto that comes outta nowhere with a harmonic backing vocals to raise it a little higher, all of it goosed with production warm as an Indian summer - but it still strikes me as an odd candidate for a hit. Then again, I was only five years old when it dropped, so what do I know about what the needed to hear? It climbed as high as No. 6 on the Billboard, No. 5 on Cashbox and comfortably went gold.
As for the pet shelter openings, Gross wrote the song in honor of the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson’s departed dog, Shannon. And, for what it's worth, he wrote some evocative poetry for it. From among the other things he told Goldmine in 2018:
“I had toured with the Beach Boys and Carl Wilson invited me to his home in Beverly Hills for lunch, but two husky dogs knocked our intended meal to the floor. Carl apologized, and I told him not to worry about it as I have an Irish setter at home, named Shannon, and it could have happened there too. Then Carl got quiet. He said that he also had an Irish setter named Shannon and that she was hit by a car and killed a month ago. That was the inspiration for the song on Terry Cashman and Tommy West’s Lifesong label.”
Maybe it wasn’t so odd. Based on what I know about 1976, the world probably needed a sonic equivalent of a hug and a cry…
The Rest of the Story
Henry Gross was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1951 and into a family that encouraged his interest in music - Wikipediacredits his mother. He played for crowds by his early teens - big ones too, including the New Jersey Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Flushing with his first band The Auroras. We got all the way to summer resorts in the Catskills before he landed his first real break into the business…which was Sha Na Na.
Gross joined the famous 50’s-revival act as a guitarist at just 18 years old and in time to play Woodstock with them right ahead of Jimi Hendrix (he recalls "destroying his guitar" on "Wipeout," so maybe he's the guy doing the crazy legs in this clip). He checked out after just one year, well before the peak of their popularity (which I’m calling at their short-lived TV show...which I watched), with aspirations to write and play something besides 50s retreads. His positive feelings about that time and the fact that he keeps up with a former bandmate or two aside, he seems to see his Sha Na Na days as a blip in his career. From his interview with Classic Bands:
“But, this stuff about Sha Na Na is really ancient stuff to me. There's not much I can add to what's out there about it. It's an old, old story to me.”
By all appearances, Henry Gross’ actual career did start after he left…and I’m sad to say that the good/juicy anecdotes have already dried up. Bottom line, the guy just had a career in the business. Not a bad one, certainly, and very long one, but the way Gross talks about it doesn’t sound so different from any other person talking about his job.
Middling success came to his way early on, both personally - e.g., he managed some regional hits on a debut and a follow-up album with ABC Dunhill in the early 70s with “Simone,” “Come On Say It,” and (the enticingly titled) “Skin King” [Ed. - still more enticing; can't find it.] - and professionally, e.g., he did session work for Judy Collins, Andy Kim, and Jim Croce (Wikipedia name-dropped, I Got a Name). Gross wrote for some of those artists, but also others - Cyndi Lauper was the odd one for me - including a Top 40 country hit called “Bit Guitar” for Blackhawk, a band fronted by his Henry Paul. Some regular collaborators came up in interviews - e.g., Roger Cook, Tommy Rocco (“I’ve had a lot of success, at least what I consider great songs”), and Tony Battaglia (“who I’ve had a lot of luck writing with”) - and he did a joint UK tour with a guy named Joe Brown as recently as 2016, but it’s mostly just him plugging away and releasing material. And, near as I can tell, it really is just him:
“I make these CDs and we sell them on the website. It's amazing how many people buy them. I'm shocked. You would think people would not be aware of me that much. I guess in the scheme of things for major labels, probably it is un-important and small, but a lot of people really enjoy the music I've been making, and we sell quite a few CDs from earlier in my career and from current CDs that I keep making. I don't have a staff of people to go and send things to radio.”
Nothing I read tells me Gross’ life looked any different when “Shannon” came out. Another minor hit - the livelier “Springtime Mama” hit No. 37 (which disqualifies him as a one-hit wonder in my book) - came out on the same album, 1976’s Release, and…I don’t know. I assume he toured on it, but…sometimes Wikipedia gets it right by just listing a bunch of other stuff that happened, joining the touring show for a musical called Pumpboys and Dinettes in the early 1980s, for instance.
Based on the light sampling I did [Ed. - I’m on the clock; no regrets.], he’s still putting out new songs; from what I’m told he sprinkles his act with anecdotes and I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. Suppose I could look it up, but…nah. Everything I’ve heard from his plays to a mid-70s singer-songwriter vein, a mix of good (because talent), deft and varied, but nothing that hit me as fun, powerful, arresting, schlocky, ironic…or even remarkable. It’s just a matter of taste, but easy listening bites you on the ass when it gets so easy that you barely notice it.
About the Sampler
I kept the Henry Gross sampler pretty tight, pulling from the three albums from what look like his peak years: Release, 1977’s Show Me to the Stage, and (if I had to sell someone on him) 1978’s Love Is the Stuff. While all of it is…very much of the era, Gross has his rockers - “Playin’ For Change,” “Juke Box Song” (both roots rock with a little crunch), “Only the Beautiful” (uh…straight 70s rock), and one of those weird “ode to rock ‘n’ roll” numbers, “Rock ‘N’ Roll I Love You” - some numbers that tilt medium- to soft-rock - “Come Along,” “String of Hearts” (nice little 50s swing number), and “What a Sound” (“Springtime Mama” probably belongs in this group.) “Shannon” has some company on the slow, somber end with numbers like “Where the Blues Begin,” “Overton Square,” and a reworking of the Beatles’ “Help” that Gross says John Lennon liked. For what it’s worth, some of the slow ones might end up on a future sampler.
Yeah, yeah, I called it “unremarkable.” Maybe it didn’t get carved into stone and/or pop culture lore, but that’s not the same thing as bad. And the man could sing pretty damn well. Anyway, till the next one…
I don’t know Henry Gross’ “Shannon,” but you might if you frequent pet shelter openings…I’ll get to it.
The song has good “mellow-70s-pop” bones - sparkling picked strings with nice reverb, a bass sound that literally slides between passages, gently troubled vocals…and, pow(!) a chorus powered by a falsetto that comes outta nowhere with a harmonic backing vocals to raise it a little higher, all of it goosed with production warm as an Indian summer - but it still strikes me as an odd candidate for a hit. Then again, I was only five years old when it dropped, so what do I know about what the needed to hear? It climbed as high as No. 6 on the Billboard, No. 5 on Cashbox and comfortably went gold.
As for the pet shelter openings, Gross wrote the song in honor of the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson’s departed dog, Shannon. And, for what it's worth, he wrote some evocative poetry for it. From among the other things he told Goldmine in 2018:
“I had toured with the Beach Boys and Carl Wilson invited me to his home in Beverly Hills for lunch, but two husky dogs knocked our intended meal to the floor. Carl apologized, and I told him not to worry about it as I have an Irish setter at home, named Shannon, and it could have happened there too. Then Carl got quiet. He said that he also had an Irish setter named Shannon and that she was hit by a car and killed a month ago. That was the inspiration for the song on Terry Cashman and Tommy West’s Lifesong label.”
Maybe it wasn’t so odd. Based on what I know about 1976, the world probably needed a sonic equivalent of a hug and a cry…
The Rest of the Story
Henry Gross was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1951 and into a family that encouraged his interest in music - Wikipediacredits his mother. He played for crowds by his early teens - big ones too, including the New Jersey Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Flushing with his first band The Auroras. We got all the way to summer resorts in the Catskills before he landed his first real break into the business…which was Sha Na Na.
Gross joined the famous 50’s-revival act as a guitarist at just 18 years old and in time to play Woodstock with them right ahead of Jimi Hendrix (he recalls "destroying his guitar" on "Wipeout," so maybe he's the guy doing the crazy legs in this clip). He checked out after just one year, well before the peak of their popularity (which I’m calling at their short-lived TV show...which I watched), with aspirations to write and play something besides 50s retreads. His positive feelings about that time and the fact that he keeps up with a former bandmate or two aside, he seems to see his Sha Na Na days as a blip in his career. From his interview with Classic Bands:
“But, this stuff about Sha Na Na is really ancient stuff to me. There's not much I can add to what's out there about it. It's an old, old story to me.”
By all appearances, Henry Gross’ actual career did start after he left…and I’m sad to say that the good/juicy anecdotes have already dried up. Bottom line, the guy just had a career in the business. Not a bad one, certainly, and very long one, but the way Gross talks about it doesn’t sound so different from any other person talking about his job.
Middling success came to his way early on, both personally - e.g., he managed some regional hits on a debut and a follow-up album with ABC Dunhill in the early 70s with “Simone,” “Come On Say It,” and (the enticingly titled) “Skin King” [Ed. - still more enticing; can't find it.] - and professionally, e.g., he did session work for Judy Collins, Andy Kim, and Jim Croce (Wikipedia name-dropped, I Got a Name). Gross wrote for some of those artists, but also others - Cyndi Lauper was the odd one for me - including a Top 40 country hit called “Bit Guitar” for Blackhawk, a band fronted by his Henry Paul. Some regular collaborators came up in interviews - e.g., Roger Cook, Tommy Rocco (“I’ve had a lot of success, at least what I consider great songs”), and Tony Battaglia (“who I’ve had a lot of luck writing with”) - and he did a joint UK tour with a guy named Joe Brown as recently as 2016, but it’s mostly just him plugging away and releasing material. And, near as I can tell, it really is just him:
“I make these CDs and we sell them on the website. It's amazing how many people buy them. I'm shocked. You would think people would not be aware of me that much. I guess in the scheme of things for major labels, probably it is un-important and small, but a lot of people really enjoy the music I've been making, and we sell quite a few CDs from earlier in my career and from current CDs that I keep making. I don't have a staff of people to go and send things to radio.”
Nothing I read tells me Gross’ life looked any different when “Shannon” came out. Another minor hit - the livelier “Springtime Mama” hit No. 37 (which disqualifies him as a one-hit wonder in my book) - came out on the same album, 1976’s Release, and…I don’t know. I assume he toured on it, but…sometimes Wikipedia gets it right by just listing a bunch of other stuff that happened, joining the touring show for a musical called Pumpboys and Dinettes in the early 1980s, for instance.
Based on the light sampling I did [Ed. - I’m on the clock; no regrets.], he’s still putting out new songs; from what I’m told he sprinkles his act with anecdotes and I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. Suppose I could look it up, but…nah. Everything I’ve heard from his plays to a mid-70s singer-songwriter vein, a mix of good (because talent), deft and varied, but nothing that hit me as fun, powerful, arresting, schlocky, ironic…or even remarkable. It’s just a matter of taste, but easy listening bites you on the ass when it gets so easy that you barely notice it.
About the Sampler
I kept the Henry Gross sampler pretty tight, pulling from the three albums from what look like his peak years: Release, 1977’s Show Me to the Stage, and (if I had to sell someone on him) 1978’s Love Is the Stuff. While all of it is…very much of the era, Gross has his rockers - “Playin’ For Change,” “Juke Box Song” (both roots rock with a little crunch), “Only the Beautiful” (uh…straight 70s rock), and one of those weird “ode to rock ‘n’ roll” numbers, “Rock ‘N’ Roll I Love You” - some numbers that tilt medium- to soft-rock - “Come Along,” “String of Hearts” (nice little 50s swing number), and “What a Sound” (“Springtime Mama” probably belongs in this group.) “Shannon” has some company on the slow, somber end with numbers like “Where the Blues Begin,” “Overton Square,” and a reworking of the Beatles’ “Help” that Gross says John Lennon liked. For what it’s worth, some of the slow ones might end up on a future sampler.
Yeah, yeah, I called it “unremarkable.” Maybe it didn’t get carved into stone and/or pop culture lore, but that’s not the same thing as bad. And the man could sing pretty damn well. Anyway, till the next one…
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