The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
of guitar wizardry may be the intro to I Got A Mind To Give Up Living, where he goes from a moan of despair to a howl of pain and then tears, all in the space of 42 seconds.
The Butterfield Band’s take on virtuosity was markedly different from most of what it inspired. Bloomfield was the first real guitar hero of the 1960s, but he was part of a group that could soar with him. (Butterfield himself could match him solo for solo on harp.) Later, blues-rock bands became just rhythm sections there to keep the beat while some kid with no life experience would ‘jam the blues’ past the threshold of annoyance. Therefore, we should revere the Butterfield Blues Band’s version of blues rock, not blame them for the idiot children it spawned.
Duke Ellington
Far East Suite
Jazz composer giant still hitting the heights 40-odd years into his career.
Record label: RCA Bluebird
Produced: Brad McCuen
Recorded: RCA Victor, Studio A; December 19–21, 1966
Released: 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Cootie Williams; William ‘Cat’ Anderson; Herbie Jones; Mercer Ellington (t); Lawrence Brown, Charles ‘Chuck’ Connors, Buster Cooper (tb); Johnny Hodges (as); Russell Procope (as, clarinet); Paul Gonsalves (ts); Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet, ts); Harry Carney (bs); Duke Ellington (p); John Lamb (b); Rufus Jones (d)
Track listing: Tourist Point Of View; Blue Bird Of Delhi (Minah); Isfahan; Depk; Mount Harissa; Blue Pepper (Far East Of The Blues); Agra; Amad; Ad Lib On Nippon
Running time: 43.51
Current CD: Bluebird 82876556142
Further listening: Such Sweet Thunder (1957); Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook (1957); New Orleans Suite (1970)
Further reading: Beyond Category: The Life And Genius Of Duke Ellington (John Edward Hasse, 1993); Duke Ellington Reader (Mark Tucker, 1993); www.dukeellington.com
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
It’s hard to overstate Duke Ellington’s stature as a 20th-century musician. Honoured by world leaders, respected by ‘legit’ cats and revered by jazz musicians of all styles and generations – Miles Davis once famously suggested that ‘all musicians should get down on their knees and thank Duke.’ His 2000-plus pieces of lovingly, compellingly crafted Negro Music (Ellington preferred the term to ‘jazz’), composed between 1923 and 1973, ranged from solo piano miniatures through art songs, pop novelties, tone parallels (his own term) and sprawling suites for jazz orchestra and choir, all characterised with discernible Ellingtonian wit, density and intelligence.
What makes his output doubly miraculous is that he kept an orchestra on the road his whole professional life. Financed by his own songwriting royalties, it was his travelling composer’s workshop, enabling him to try things out as soon as he had written them. Rarely doing anything other than sleeping, eating, fornicating (he was a confessed ‘sexual intercourse freak’), performing, writing and travelling, he would compose on trains or at recording sessions and often rehearse after performances into the morning in an amazing sustained feat of unreasonable dedication. ‘It’s our hobby,’ he would say, smiling.
Inspired by ‘that big, wonderful and beautiful world’, the band visited the Middle East and Japan in 1963–64. Ellington and his friend and co-composer Billy Strayhorn fashioned first the four-movement Impressions Of The Far East, developing it into the nine-movement Far East Suite which ranks among their greatest achievements. Densely colourful and vividly exotic, it is at the same time archetypal Ellington with blues forms, impressionistic swing and characterful jazz solos, taking care not to over-utilise ethnic musical material. Ellington explained that other musicians had already copied the rhythms and scales of these places and he preferred to absorb the essence of an influence and ‘let it roll around, undergo a chemical change and then seep out on paper in a form that will suit the musicians who are going to play it’. Those mighty players included tenorist Paul Gonsalves, serpentine and voluptuous on Tourist Point Of View, clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton, fleet and playful on Blue Bird Of Delhi, and altoist Johnny Hodges, magnificently sensual on Isfahan (where Ellington observed ‘all was poetry’), an unspeakably beautiful piece which must take its place within the top hour of all Ellingtonia. Strayhorn died months after the recording and though Ellington continued to produce rigorous work, the loss of his intimate musical confidant since 1941 signified the end of an era.
Bobby Darin
If I Were A Carpenter
Former teen idol reinvents himself for the third time with a Tim Hardin song.
Record label: Atlantic
Produced: Charles Koppelman and Don Rubin
Recorded: Gold Star Studio, Los Angeles; August 15, November 31 and October 1, 1966
Released: January 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) 142 (US)
Personnel: Bobby Darin (v); no other musicians credited
Track listing: If I Were A Carpenter (S); Reason To Believe; Sittin’ Here Lovin’ You (S); Misty Roses; Until It’s Time For You To Go; For Baby; The Girl That Stood Beside Me (S); Red Balloon; Amy; Don’t Make Promises; Day Dream
Running time: 26.03
Current CD: Not currently available
Further listening: The 4-CD As Long As I’m Singing: The Bobby Darin Collection (1998)
Further reading: Roman Candle: The Life Of Bobby Darin (David Evanier, 2004); www.bobbydarin.net
Download: Not currently legally available
Darin had one of rock’n’roll’s most unfathomable careers. Listen to the records he made across a career cut short at the age of only 37 (he died of a heart attack in December 1973) and you have almost no clues to the man’s identity. There are undoubted classic moments; his own Dream Lover (1959) is one of the era’s classic teen ballads. But just a year later he was the finger-clicking swinger behind Mack The Knife.
There’s some doubt, of course, that If I Were A Carpenter was truly Darin’s own brainchild. The album’s producers Charles Koppelman and Don Rubin brought the songs to the table, seven of which were by either Tim Hardin or John Sebastian, both of whom they also represented. Yet Darin was no stranger to folk or even folk rock. As early as 1963 he’d recorded the folk-based Earthy And Golden Folk Hits; James Burton, Jim McGuinn, Fred Neil and Phil Ochs allegedly attended the sessions. Darin was also the first to perform Dylan songs at Las Vegas around this time (a dubious honour, perhaps). But whatever the motives, If I Were A Carpenter and the similar Inside Out, which followed a few months later, are stylistic triumphs.
Darin recorded If I Were A Carpenter as a single in August 1966. Hardin’s own released version would not appear for over a year, but his arrangement is clearly what Darin’s treatment was based upon. Hardin complained bitterly that Darin had completely copied his phrasing. Susan Moore (Hardin’s wife) later recalled: ‘Tim and I were out driving when it came on the radio. I thought it was him, it was so close. The brakes screeched. The door slammed. And Tim was stomping on the side of the road, screaming and swearing.’ Would Hardin’s own version have met with the same success? Somehow it’s doubtful.
There’s further irony that Tim Hardin’s only US chart hit (Number 50 in 1969) was Simple Song Of Freedom – penned