The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
‘Spider’ John Koerner (v, g); Dave ‘Snaker’ Ray (v, hm, bottleneck guitar, 12-string); Tony ‘Little Sun’ Glover (v, hm)
Track listing: Linin’ Track; Ramblin’ Blues; It’s All Right; Hangman; Down To Louisiana; Creepy John; Bugger Burns; Sun’s Wail; One Kind Favor; Go Down Ol’ Hannah; Good Time Charlie; Banjo Thing; Stop That Thing; Snaker’s Here; Low Down Rounder; Jimmy Bel
Running time: 41.41
Current CD: Elektra 8122765062 adds: Ted Mack Rag; Dust My Broom; Too Bad; Mumblin’ Word and the album Lots More Blues Rags And Hollers (1964).
Further listening: Lots More Blues Rags And Hollers (1964); Koerner and Glover’s Spider Blues (1965); Koerner and Willie Murphy’s Running, Jumping, Standing Still (1994)
Further reading: Follow The Music (Jac Holzman, 2000); www.wirz.de/music/krgfrm.htm (fan site)
Download: emusic
Back in 1963 Paul Nelson, the editor of folk magazine The Little Sandy Review, had been approached by Ed Nunn, a hobby-recordist and independent record label owner, who was looking for a folk act to record. Nelson suggested Koerner, Ray And Glover and for 300 bucks they recorded an album for his Audiophile label (his previous bestseller was an album with one whole side devoted to a thunderstorm). Ensconced in an old Women’s Club for a ten-hour session fuelled by a little speed and some good burgers, the trio cut 40 songs in a variety of set-ups; a cappella, accompanied, duets, solo and all three together playing live. ‘It wasn’t exactly a comfortable situation,’ recalls Tony Glover. ‘We were on the edge about recording and the producer wouldn’t allow us our usual lubrication.’
Further reduction left a 20-track set of raw and rattling blues – still an unusual pursuit among young white boys. A limited edition of 300 copies were pressed, including their spirited versions of Leadbelly’s Hangman, Robert Johnson’s Dust My Broom and Blind Lemon Jefferson’s One Kind Favor, interspersed with suitably raucous rallying calls of their own making. It sold out immediately.
Glover: ‘We figured that this would be our only album, so we wanted to get as many tunes on as possible. But the tracks went right up to the label and cut out on some people’s players.’ When Elektra’s Jac Holzman heard it he lost no time in signing the trio and buying out the rights to re-issue their debut. Elektra removed four songs per side (which are reinstated on the Red House CD reissue) in order to enhance the sound quality and Blues, Rags And Hollers helped establish it as the hippest of labels.
‘Some years later, Love were being courted by every label on the scene,’ Holzman remembered. ‘But Arthur Lee insisted on Elektra because it was the label that released Koerner, Ray And Glover. The same thing happened with Paul Butterfield and The Doors.’ John Lennon was a fan too. What had impressed them all was the intense passion that Koerner, Ray And Glover displayed for the material. People had never heard anything like it before.
As The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian noted: ‘It was played much faster than the originals because it was done by three excitable young white guys.’
The Holy Modal Rounders
The Holy Modal Rounders
America’s first truly underground group blend old-time banjo music, bluegrass and traditional folk with a unique vision.
Record label: Prestige
Produced: Paul Rothschild
Recorded: New York City; December 11, 1963 and January 17, 1964
Released: February 1964
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Peter Stampfel (fiddle, banjo, v); Steve Weber (g, v)
Track listing: Blues In The Bottle; Fiddler A Dram; The Cuckoo; Euphoria; Long John; Hesitation Blues; Hey, Hey Baby; Reuben’s Train; Mister Spaceman; Moving Day; Better Things For You; Same Old Man; Hop High Ladies; Bound To Lose
Running time: 35.13
Current CD: Big Beat CDWIKD 176 adds: Flop Eared Mule; Black Eyed Susie; Sail Away Ladies; Clinch Mountain Backstep; Fishing Blues; Statesboro’ Blues; Jumko Partner; Mole In The Ground; Hot Corn Cold Corn; Down The Old Plank Road; Chevrolet Six; Crowley Waltz; Bully Of The Town; Sugar In The Ground; Soldier’s Joy
Further listening: Everything you need is on the CD above.
Further reading: Follow The Music (Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws, 1997); www.holymodalrounders.com
Download: emusic
The Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ’60s attracted the ambitious and talented, the ambitious but talentless, the right-on, the put-upon and the just plain weird. The Holy Modal Rounders were as weird as it got. Stampfel and Weber were talented and accomplished players, who first met up in Greenwich Village in March 1963. In the original sleevenotes, Stampfel attempted to pin down the fruit of their union: ‘Steve calls it rockabilly and I call it progressive old-timey. No-one has ever played music like us before.’
They kicked their music out of shape by playing every theatre, book store, street gathering, festival, coffee house and folk club around the Village prior to recording The Holy Modal Rounders on December 11, 1963, for the Prestige Folklore imprint. The other key folk labels of the day, Elektra and Vanguard, had also approached them; they went with Prestige’s Paul Rothschild because he smoked dope.
Opening with Blues In The Bottle – an obscure 1930 recording later brought to the wider world courtesy of The Lovin’ Spoonful – the album’s tone is set, the Rounders’ personalised lyrics veering close to the edge: ‘I don’t need nobody sniffin’ glue.’ Hesitation Blues features the first recorded use of the word ‘psychedelic’; it’s one of three brilliant Charlie Poole songs on the album, all ’20s period pieces transformed into a kind of lysergic folk. Almost every song comes loaded with drug references and scatological rhymes: the Rounders made up new words for all the material they covered, and sang in unconventionally blended voices; Weber’s like early Dylan on helium and Stampfel’s a nasal twang. Ultimately, The Holy Modal Rounders is tremendous fun.
That the band ever got to make an album is remarkable; that there was a second later that year smacks of complete madness on the part of their record label. But there’s a wit, originality and sense of joy – and a prescient, subversive intent – that sets these two records apart from everything else in their day. Unsurprisingly, they soon teamed up with beat activists The Fugs (on whose first two albums they play), though they’re probably still best known for 1968’s Bird Song, featured in the movie Easy Rider. The band continued into the ’70s with augmented line-ups that included Michael Hurley and playwright Sam Shephard as drummer at different times. But none of their subsequent work approaches the inspired mayhem on offer here.
Davy Graham And Shirley Collins
Folk Roots, New Routes
A seemingly bizarre pairing of folk song’s English rose and an inventive young guitar genius.
Record label: Topic
Produced: Ray Horricks
Recorded: Decca Studios, London; January 1964
Released: March 1964
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Shirley Collins (v, g, banjo); Davy Graham (g); Gus Dudgeon (e)
Track listing: Nottamun Town; Proud Maisrie; The Cherry Tree