The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
Ways; Mixed Up Mess Of A Heart
Running time: 31.16
Current CD: CAP447942 adds: Branded Man album
Further listening: Branded Man (1967)
Further reading: My House Of Memories: (Merle Haggard, 1999); www.merlehaggard.com
Download: iTunes
Many country singers sang about a fantasy. Not Flossie Haggard’s boy, who began running away from home when a young teen and who knew divorce, alcohol, railroads, even life behind bars. When people asked why he got himself into so much trouble, he’d tell them he just wanted to experience the kind of life he heard about in Jimmie Rodgers songs. Haggard was a New Traditionalist 20 years ahead of his time – and he sang about the classic country topics with authority and a tender, understanding grace.
Although he had had some success on his friend Fuzzy Owens’s small Talley Records, it seemed like every song he released would be covered by a more established singer who would get the bigger hit. Fortunately, Capitol’s country producer and A&R man Ken Nelson saw the pattern and called Owen in 1965, saying, ‘Why don’t y’all cut out this baloney and get up here and let’s take care of this thing.’ Which they did, signing to the label. Three albums later, Haggard’s popularity was rising but he had still not made his mark in the eyes of the country music public. On the advice of a local agent he travelled to Liz Anderson’s house to hear some songs she had written. Sitting down at a battered old pump organ, she performed the song that would become this album’s title track.
Haggard was stunned as he listened. He felt the song defined him perfectly, outlining a persona he could quite comfortably colour in. His version of her song made Number 1 in the country singles charts – one of three hit singles he scored in 1966. Meanwhile, as demand for an album increased, Haggard set to writing (or, more precisely, dictating, or scribbling on used paper bags) some of the best material of his career – including classic honky-tonk lament Drink Up And Be Somebody and the haunting Life In Prison, later covered by Gram Parsons on The Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo – augmenting them with a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’s My Rough And Rowdy Ways. Haggard would go on to have better-selling albums but he would never again be quite as raw and authentic.
The Mothers Of Invention
Freak Out
Rock music’s first double album takes in blues, R&B, doo-wop, rock, surrealist satire and La Monte Young.
Record label: Verve
Produced: Tom Wilson
Recorded: Sunset Highland Studios of TTG Inc; March 9–12, 1966
Released: March 27, 1967 (UK) August 1966 (US)
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Frank Zappa (g); Ray Collins (v); Jim Black (d); Roy Estrada (b); Elliot Ingber (g); various unknown LA sessioniers
Track listing: Hungry Freaks Daddy; I Ain’t Got No Heart; Who Are The Brain Police?; Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder; Motherly Love; How Could I Be Such A Fool; Wowie Zowie; You Didn’t Try To Call Me; Any Way The Wind Blows; I’m Not Satisfied; You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here; Trouble Every Day; Help I’m A Rock; It Can’t Happen Here; The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet
Running time: 60.31
Current CD: Rykodisc RCD 10501
Further listening: Uncle Meat (1969)
Further reading: Waiting For The Sun: Strange Days, Weird Science And The Sound Of Los Angeles (Barney Hoskyns, 1996); Frank Zappa In His Own Words (1993); Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics Of Poodle Play (Ben Watson, 1996); www.zappa.com
Download: HMV Digital
When Frank Zappa gathered up his motley collection of bar band oddballs, LBJ ‘great society’ rejects and bona fide freaks and landed himself a major label record contract, he alerted the world to the new American underground. Freak Out was a landmark that arguably has never been surpassed in scope and ambition. MGM hardly knew what they were getting.
‘The first track we laid down was Any Way The Wind Blows,’ said Zappa. ‘The second was Who Are The Brain Police? I could see [producer] Tom Wilson on the phone through the control room window calling the head office in New York saying, Well you’re not going to believe this.’
Who Are The Brain Police? is one of the scariest songs ever to emerge from the rock psyche, a Kafka-esque vision of contemporary America where personal identity and individuality are erased. In context, it offers a nightmarish counterpoint to the more overt political polemic of Hungry Freaks Daddy and Trouble Every Day (the latter originally titled The Watts Riot Song). Although much of the music was played by the Mothers, Zappa was shrewd enough to augment Freak Out with the cream of LA’s session musicians (credited as The Mothers Auxiliary). Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder; You Didn’t Try To Call Me; Any Way The Wind Blows; I’m Not Satisfied; How Could I Be Such A Fool – all later re-recorded for Cruising With Ruben And The Jets – are given full orchestral treatments and reveal Zappa’s formidable talent as an arranger. Sure, the Mothers looked like Hell’s Angels who’d come for your daughter, but there was also a good chance they’d take her home to play her Stravinsky and Charles Ives. Subsequently, Zappa tended to apportion his musical iconoclasm to specific albums: savage satire (We’re Only In It For The Money); classical motifs and musique concrete (Lumpy Gravy) and doo-wop (Cruising With Ruben And The Jets). Only the equally impressive Uncle Meat casts its net as wide as does this audacious debut.
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Are You Experienced?
Landmark debut from rock’s original wild axe-man.
Record label: Track (UK) MCA (US)
Produced: Chas Chandler
Recorded: De Lane Lea, London; January–March 1967; Olympic Studios, London; February–April 1967
Released: May 12, 1967 (UK) August 23, 1967 (US)
Chart peaks: 2 (UK) 5 (US)
Personnel: Jimi Hendrix (v, g); Noel Redding (b, v); Mitch Mitchell (d)
Track listing: Foxy Lady (S/US); Manic Depression; Red House (UK only); Hey Joe (US only) (S); Can You See Me? (UK only); Love Or Confusion; I Don’t Live Today; May This Be Love; Wind Cries Mary (US only) (S, UK only); Fire; Third Stone From The Sun; Remember (UK only); Purple Haze (S, US only); Are You Experienced?
Running time: 38.38 (US) 40.12 (UK)
Current CD: MCA MCD11608 adds: Stone Free; 51st Anniversary; Highway Chile
Further listening: Axis Bold As Love (1967); Electric Ladyland (1968)
Further reading: Are You Experienced? (Noel Redding and Carol Appleby, 1990); Room Full Of Mirrors: A Biography Of Jimi Hendrix (Charles R Cross, 2005); www.jimihendrix.com
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
Are You Experienced? is best experienced in mono. With rock’s involvement with stereo still confined to spacey panning and scattering vocals around either speaker – and period psychedelia only adding to the confusion – even the best-realised record was a plague of distracting gimmickry. In mono, however, the full majesty of Hendrix’s vision shatters the speakers, proof that this boy didn’t need technology to make