The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
then only 19 years old, sings with a ferocity that’s still startling. The album is a British blues boom classic and yet under-appreciated; rumours are that it was actually made by sessionmen having sabotaged its – and the band’s – reputation. Morrison has never publicly refuted the allegations, but his colleagues are adamant that like contemporaries The Kinks and The Who, sessionmen – including Jimmy Page – were occasionally imposed upon them, only to fill out the sound of the core band, not the featured roles. And aural evidence supports this, for, frankly, the ramshackle excitement of the playing is surely the sound of a bunch of rowdies from the bars, clubs and dives of Belfast, rather than the sound of professional sessionmen.
Sometimes known as The Angry Young Them after the slogan emblazoned on the back of the sleeve, the album begins electrifyingly with the rampaging Mystic Eyes, an instrumental until near the end, when Morrison improvises some enigmatic, fragmentary lyrics. ‘Van was always good at ad-libbing,’ enthuses guitarist Billy Harrison. ‘He could just conjure words as he was performing. And no one in Britain could phrase like him.’ Them includes Gloria, previously the B-side of the band’s debut hit, Baby Please Don’t Go, which became a US hit for the Shadows Of Knight and a rock standard, covered by Hendrix, Patti Smith, the Grateful Dead and countless others. Morrison had been the last to join the original band (‘We brought him in to play saxophone, but he knew more blues songs than me so he began to sing,’ recalls Harrison) but Them’s personnel never stabilised, which further undermined the band’s status.
‘If management had supported, instead of exploited, Them could have been on a level with the Stones,’ sighs founder member Eric Wrixon. ‘We were more extreme and musically in advance of them.’ But it wasn’t to be and, to many, Them are now regarded as only a trivial, early footnote in the history of Van the Man, the absurdity of which is obvious to anyone who has ever thrilled to the raw power that throbs from this extraordinary album.
Jackson C Frank
Jackson C Frank
American troubadour records prototype singer-songwriter LP, influencing Nick Drake, Simon & Garfunkel, Sandy Denny and others in the process
Record label: Columbia
Produced: Paul Simon
Recorded: CBS Studios, New Bond Street, London; spring 1965
Released: Summer 1965
Chart Peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Jackson C Frank (g, v); Al Stewart (g)
Track listing: Blues Run The Game; Don’t Look Back; Kimbie; Yellow Walls; Here Come The Blues; Milk And Honey; My Name Is Carnival; Dialogue; Just Like Anything; You Never Wanted Me
Current CD: Castle CMEDD762 adds a second disc of unreleased tracks and alternate takes.
Further listening: The above CD covers pretty much everything Frank recorded.
Further reading: www.blueangel.demon.co.uk/jcfrank/ (fan site); www.folkblues.co.uk/artistsfrank.htm
Download: Not currently legally available
Years before confessional singer-songwriting was in vogue, the enigmatic Jackson Carey Frank recorded an album that more or less defined the genre, describing it in his sleevenotes as ‘the newspaper obituary of my inner self’. Yet whilst his acolytes achieved fame and fortune in his wake, his sad life bore out the words of his most famous song, the beautiful, prematurely world-weary ‘Blues Run The Game’: ‘Maybe tomorrow honey, someplace down the line/I’ll wake up older, and I’ll just stop all my trying.’
Born in Buffalo, NY in 1943, Frank’s entire life was blighted by a terrible fire that engulfed his school when he was 11, killing eighteen of his classmates and giving him third degree burns. Whilst he eventually recovered his mobility, physically and mentally he was scarred for life. After a slow convalescence during which he taught himself guitar, Frank gained access to a huge insurance payout when he turned 21 in 1964, and set sail for England in search of the high life, writing ‘Blues Run The Game’ en route.
He could not have arrived at a better time. The UK folk scene was blossoming and Frank largely abandoned his bacchanalian aspirations in favour of the bohemian club lifestyle, retaining only a dandified dress sense, an Aston Martin and a large collection of Martin guitars. He soon became romantically involved with Sandy Denny and moved in with Al Stewart and fellow expats Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, all waiting for stardom. Simon was quick to appreciate Frank’s talent and offered to produce an album for him. Recorded in a single three-hour session in mid-1965, it melds traditional sounds (‘Kimbie’) with protest (‘Don’t Look Back’), stream of consciousness (‘My Name Is Carnival’) and the more personal, melancholy songs (‘Blues Run The Game’, ‘You Never Wanted Me’) that were to have such an impact on the next generation of UK songwriters. Despite the extreme nerves that he experienced in the studio, where he insisted on recording behind a screen, his singing and picking are exceptional throughout. The album was rapturously received in folk circles and played to death by aspiring singers across the UK.
Despite this triumph, Frank found it hard to maintain his creativity. After abortive attempts at a follow-up, and having blown most of his money, in 1968 he fled homewards to an increasingly lonely and depressing existence. For much of the next 30 years he would be destitute, living either on the streets or in mental hospitals, too dispirited to contact old acquaintances and too infirm to perform. A broken man, Frank died in March 1999.
BB King
Live At The Regal
Widely regarded as the greatest ever live blues album.
Record label: Chess
Produced: Johnny Pate
Recorded: The Regal Theatre, Chicago, Illinois; November 21, 1964
Released: July 1965
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: BB King (g, v); other musicians uncredited
Track listing: Every Day (I Have The Blues); Sweet Little Angel; It’s My Own Fault; How Blue Can You Get; Please Love Me; You Upset Me Baby; Worry, Worry; Woke Up This Mornin’; You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now; Help The Poor
Running time: 34.54
Current CD: MCA MCD11646
Further listening: Another live album, Blues Is King (1967), recorded in a Chicago nightclub; King Of The Blues (1992) is a valuable 4-CD compilation.
Further reading: The Arrival Of BB King (Charles Sawyer, 1980); Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of BB King (1996); www.bbking.com
Download: HMV Digital; iTunes
‘The world’s greatest blues singer, the King Of The Blues – BB King’, is how he is introduced on this seminal live album. If anyone doubted that King deserved such an introduction before hearing this performance, no one could doubt it afterwards.
The Regal Theatre was one of the major stops on the chittlin’ circuit and King often played several residencies there in a year. ‘I don’t think I played any better than I’ve played before, but the feedback from the audience was good,’ he has said of this performance. He’s not kidding: the crowd shriek, scream and holler throughout as King plays with a white-hot intensity, his own voice as impassioned as his guitar Lucille’s on songs such as Every Day (I Have The Blues), Sweet Little Angel and You Upset Me Baby, some of which he’d been playing for a decade or more and was to continue to play into the 21st century. On the witty How Blue Can You Get, King declaims: ‘I gave you seven children/And